All great content has a hook—something that grabs the viewer’s attention while driving meaningful engagement. Think of your social media strategy’s executive summary as the “hook” for your performance reports. It highlights clear, digestible insights that capture your leadership team’s attention while demonstrating your work’s value.

A well-received social media report can lay the groundwork for more resources, recognition and trust. In this guide, we share how to draft executive summaries that communicate social’s impact in a concise and compelling way.

P.S. If you want to fast-track report setup, use our social media scorecard template. Fill it in with your own data for a C-suite ready overview of your brand health and social strategy.

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Why executive summaries matter to your social reporting strategy

To most social marketers, metrics like impressions, engagements, conversions and clicks require little to no explanation. These are the numbers you probably already monitor regularly to measure your social performance and identify areas for improvement.

While these metrics may make complete sense to you and your team, things like follower count and reach are as good as gibberish to an executive unfamiliar with the nuances of your social strategy. If they can’t see the impact of social on business goals, how can they see the value in social at all?

A strong executive summary bridges knowledge gaps at the executive level by translating raw data into a concise narrative that can resonate with leaders—including C-suite executives. It makes your insights and recommendations more accessible, increasing the likelihood that stakeholders will engage with and act upon the information provided.

3 reasons to upgrade your reports with social media summaries

At first, you might think of social media executive summaries as just another task for your to do list. However, when you look at the bigger picture, you’ll see it’s a little task that can save a lot of time. Here’s how:

They earn executive buy-in

 When leadership can’t immediately connect how social influences different parts of the business, they’re less likely to throw their support behind the social team’s efforts.

We asked social marketers how they plan to connect the value of social to business goals in 2024 in our latest Sprout Social Index™ report. More than half (60%) plan to quantify the value of social media engagement in terms of potential revenue impact.

A green graphic from The 2023 Sprout Social Index™ listing the top ways marketers plan on connecting the value of social go business goals in 2024.

A standard social report can contain dozens of unique KPIs. Each has their own importance, but only a select few ladder up to your unique business goals. An executive summary creates space to spotlight those metrics so their impact is crystal clear.

Capitalizing on these opportunities to communicate results can help secure executive buy-in when it’s time to ask for things like additional budget and resources. Suppose you want to increase your budget for a paid social campaign. You stand a much better chance of winning your finance executive over if you can show them how your social campaigns are performing and measure the return on investment.

There’s power in personalization

Social media is no longer exclusive to your marketing team. Leaders across customer care, product development, human resources and more now have a stake in your social strategy. When it comes to results, they’re all looking for something different.

Executive summaries can tailor your reports to the expectations of several unique audiences, so you can accurately showcase your impact. Sprout’s My Reports tool–part of our Premium Analytics–allows teams to scale this process through the power of annotations. Users can create team-specific text annotations that provide rich context on strategic goals and big wins as they relate to the collaborator’s discipline.

A custom report open in Sprout Social's analytics solution. The report is a social dashboard detailing the user's progress toward Q1 goals. They use the annotation widget to share details on their strategy and ongoing A/B tests.

Once those notes are set, you can share several different versions of the same report using links based on custom reporting views. In such reports, when a customer care leader clicks their unique link, they might see engagement and team activity metrics, paired with a written update on feedback from recent NPS surveys shared via Facebook and Instagram. Your sales leader, on the other hand, will see organic and paid click-through and conversion rates along with a recap of trending products.

If you’re not using Sprout, you can still recreate this effect with some more time and effort. For example, if you share reports via spreadsheet, you can make several copies and use the first tab of each for tailored summaries.

They start conversations

Over time, a detailed report can socialize the power of social media with even the most offline business leaders. Communicating your social results on a regular cadence eliminates any ambiguity in your social strategy and ensures executives are always looped in on relevant efforts.

All of this works in tandem to elevate your company’s social media maturity. When leaders have the right context, they can ask the right questions and provide the right amount of support. Over time, this will refine your strategy and strengthen your skills as a marketer.

A text-based image explaining the three stages of social media maturity: Emerging, Evolving, and Mastering.

Evolving social media discussions happening within your organization is the first step to evolving your brand’s approach to social media. Social media strategy executive summaries are the perfect way to start the dialogue.

Craft a social media strategy executive summary that gets noticed

Armed with an executive summary of your social media report, you can convince even the most skeptical executives about the impact social can have on your business. All you have to do is make reporting and data sharing a regular habit.

Use these social media scorecard templates to get a head start on your next executive update. Just compile your data, conduct your analysis and fill them in. You’ll be left with an engaging, C-suite-ready report that will keep leaders up-to-date on social’s impact on your organization.