A report is not proof of effort, it is a decision-making tool. If it does not tell either side what to do next, it merely consumes time.
Always include
- Venues in play and how many were added.
- Contacts made. Comments, replies, dialogues.
- Dialogues started and how many reached a request.
- What was actually written. Real examples — the most convincing part of any report.
- What got in the way. Restrictions, closed comment sections, downtime.
Numbers that mislead
Reach and impressions. Impressive and unrelated to money. Posts processed. That is your kitchen, not their business. Percentages without a base. «Conversion doubled» across four dialogues means nothing.
Bad news first
Write it at the top. A client who hears about a problem from you considers you reliable; a client who notices the downtime themselves concludes the opposite. A line reading «three accounts were restricted, replaced, volume restored by Thursday» is worth more than a page of good numbers.
Cadence and format
Weekly and short, monthly with conclusions. Daily reports create a sense of churn and provoke tweaking settings on noise: week-to-week swings in cold traffic are normal and need no reaction.
One page. Three numbers with a comparison at the top, what was done and what blocked it in the middle, what is planned at the end. Everything else as an appendix for whoever wants to dig. Long reports do not get read, and that is not laziness: your report is one of twenty things in the client's week. Which numbers to collect at all is in the funnel piece.