Analyzing posts within your analytics dashboard

The Posts tab within Buffer's analytics dashboard provides a history of all of your published posts. Looking at your posts individually allows you to draw comparisons and see patterns around which posting times might be working best for you, how your boosted posts are performing, and what type of content your audience might be most engaged with.

πŸŽ₯ Keen to learn more about your analytics? View our tutorial videos here!

Start by selecting the channel you'd like to analyze on the left hand side of your dashboard, and then selecting the Posts tab.

This article contains the following sections:

  1. Filtering your report
  2. Diving into your report
  3. Adding tables and charts to a custom report
  4. Facebook metrics
  5. Instagram metrics
  6. X/Twitter metrics
  7. LinkedIn metrics

⭐️ The Posts report is available on paid plans. Learn more about our plans and pricing here.

Filtering your report

If you have multiple social channels of one network (e.g. multiple Instagram accounts), you can change the channel at the top, as well as the date range you'd like to analyze.

Toggle in the drop down to select the social channel for which you want to see analytics
Toggle to select a social channel to view its analytics

Diving into your report

Summary table

The summary table shows aggregate metrics for all posts published during the selected date range. We'll show you impressions, reach, users, comments, and your engagement rate.

Buffer's analytics dashboard also shows you insights for boosted Facebook posts or promoted Instagram posts. Learn tips on which posts to boost and how to best measure your results in our blog post here!

Organic posts and boosted posts are represented by blue and green respectively in the bar chart.

The percentages indicate any change in metrics compared to the previous period. So, for example, if you have the last 7 days set as your date range, the percentage change will be a comparison to the previous 7-day period before that.

Post summary showing Posts, Reach, Reactions, Comments, Shares and Engagement Rate counts
Buffer analytics dashboard post summary table

πŸ“ If you’re not seeing boosted posts data, it could be because you need to allow permission for this. Learn more in the article: Why isn't my ad data displayed on boosted posts?

Hashtag performance table

The hashtag performance table provides insight into how your hashtags could be affecting your reach and engagement rates. You can use this information to inform your posting strategy by looking at posts with hashtags that are associated with the highest reach and engagement rates. At the moment, only the top five hashtags that had the most engagement in the date range selected are shown in this table.

πŸ“ Hashtags included in both the main caption of the post and the first comment are shown in this table. The average reach and average engagement rate for your hashtags are based on your organic posts only. They do not include the additional reach and engagement from boosting. Additionally, for LinkedIn and X/Twitter, we show your average impressions because their APIs do not provide the reach metric.

Buffer analytics dashboard hashtag performance chart
Buffer analytics dashboard hashtag performance chart

Posts insights

The posts insights table shows you all of your published posts, sorted by impressions in descending order by default. You can filter posts by keywords and hashtags, as well as sort them either by date or another metric. The post time shown is in your browser timezone.

For every post that was boosted, you can easily see the proportion of organic and paid results. You can also hover over the bar charts to see the exact breakdown.

Buffer analytics dashboard showing Post clicks, Reactions, Impressions, Reach, Engagement Rate, and Spend for posts
Buffer Post Insights

The post insights table only shows the five key metrics of each post. To see the remaining metrics, click on the image. Within this window, you can hover over the respective bars to see the exact breakdown between organic and paid.

Buffer analytics dashboard individual post metrics: Impressions, Reach, Reactions, Likes, Comments, Shares, Clicks, Engagement Rate, Total Spend
Buffer analytics dashboard

πŸ“ If a post has been published and later edited or deleted, the original post will appear in your analytics dashboard and not the edited version.

Adding tables and charts to a custom report

Finally, you can add any of the tables and charts from this area to a custom report. Simply click the βž• plus button at the top right of any chart you'd like to include. Learn more about creating custom reports here.

You can also export all data as both CSV and image files using the Export as... button.

Export Buffer reports by clicking
Export your Buffer reports

Facebook metrics

The table below provides an overview of which metrics are available in each table and chart. Find Facebook metrics descriptions here. All metrics are pulled from Facebook's Graph API.

  Summary table Hashtag performance table Posts insights table
Posts βœ“ βœ“  
Post Reach βœ“ βœ“ βœ“
Post Impressions     βœ“
Link Clicks     βœ“
Reactions βœ“   βœ“
Comments βœ“   βœ“
Shares βœ“   βœ“
Engagement Rate βœ“ βœ“ βœ“

Instagram metrics

The table below provides an overview of which metrics are available in each table and chart. Find Instagram metrics descriptions here. All metrics are pulled from Instagram's Graph API.

  Summary table Hashtag performance table Posts insights table
Posts βœ“ βœ“  
Reach βœ“ βœ“ βœ“
Impressions βœ“   βœ“
Likes βœ“   βœ“
Comments βœ“   βœ“
Engagement Rate βœ“ βœ“ βœ“

X/Twitter metrics

The table below provides an overview of which metrics are available in each table and chart. Find X/Twitter metric descriptions here. All metrics are pulled from Gnip, which is X/Twitter’s enterprise data service.

  Summary table Hashtag performance table Posts insights table
Posts βœ“ βœ“  
Impressions   βœ“ βœ“
Clicks βœ“   βœ“
Likes βœ“   βœ“
Replies βœ“    
Reposts βœ“   βœ“
Engagement Rate βœ“ βœ“ βœ“

LinkedIn metrics

The table below provides an overview of which metrics are available in each table and chart. You can find a detailed description of each metric here. All metrics are pulled from LinkedIn's Marketing Analytics APIs.

  Summary table Hashtag performance table Posts insights table
Posts βœ“ βœ“  
Impressions βœ“ βœ“ βœ“
Likes βœ“   βœ“
Comments βœ“   βœ“
Shares βœ“    
Clicks βœ“   βœ“
Engagement Rate βœ“ βœ“ βœ“
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