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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ➕ 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.