Academy / Social media from plan to results

Lesson 4 of 5 · 5 min

Read the results

Where to look in Analytics, which three numbers matter for your goal, how to read a week against its average, and what the numbers cannot tell you.

After a month of posting, Analytics holds a lot of numbers. You do not need most of them. You need the one from your goal, a view of how it moved, and a few clues about why.

Start with the number from your goal

1. Open Analytics. It opens on Week by week.
2. At the top is last week in one sentence, like "Last week: 4 posts, 31 likes, comments, saves and shares, 6 new DM conversations and 3 new subscribers."
3. Find the chart for your goal number, for example New email subscribers. Each bar is a week.
4. Compare the last 4 weeks with the 4 before them. The dark line is the 4-week average, so one odd week does not fool you.

Write down the number now and where you started in lesson 1. That is your result.

Look at the whole picture

Switch to Channels and pick 30 days at the top. The page adds up every channel and puts an arrow under each number, such as "Up 12% from the 30 days before". Green went the good way, red did not.

• Followers and Reach per day show if more people see you.
• Engagement rate shows how many of them react. 2% means 2 likes or comments for every 100 followers.
• Your five best posts and the Best times to post are further down. Pick a channel under Each channel to see its own numbers.

Did the plan hold?

On Week by week, the card Plan against reality puts your last 4 full weeks next to your Strategy. For each pillar you see the share you planned, the share you posted, and the likes and comments per post. It also says in how many weeks you reached your posts per week.

If you planned 3 posts a week and managed 1, the results say more about the rhythm than about the content.

Further down, Posting and what followed says if the weeks you posted more were also the weeks more people signed up or wrote to you. It needs 8 weeks of numbers. Before that it says so.

What the numbers cannot tell you

• Two numbers that rise together do not prove one caused the other. Postfjord shows them side by side and does not make up a return on investment.
• A few weeks is not a lot of data. One post that went well is a hint, not a rule.
• Most people who see a post never tap it. They save it, tell a friend or find you later, which is why the weekly view counts saves, shares, DMs and signups too.
• Channels share different numbers. Instagram and Facebook share the most. For others you may only see how many posts you published.

How you know it worked

You can say in one sentence what happened to your goal number this month, what the plan was, and whether you kept to it.

In this course

• 1A goal you can measureTurn "grow on social" into one number you can check, pick it from what Postfjord counts, find where you start today and write it down in Strategy. · 4 min
• 2Plan the month from the goalSet how often you post, give each topic its share, and check that every pillar helps the goal before you fill the calendar. · 4 min
• 3Post on a steady rhythmGive each channel its own rhythm, keep to it with the calendar, and leave a note on the weeks something special happens. · 4 min
• 4Read the resultsWhere to look in Analytics, which three numbers matter for your goal, how to read a week against its average, and what the numbers cannot tell you. · 5 min
• 5Change next month's planTurn what you read into one change, shift pillar shares from the numbers, redraft your best post, save a monthly report and start the loop again. · 5 min