How do I use the Post Performance Report?
Table of Contents
New to Sprout Social? Learn more about how our Post Performance Report fits into our social media analytics suite here.
The Post Performance Report in Sprout Social helps you analyze your published content down to the individual post and to understand its performance with your audience. The Post Performance Report provides a unified view of your post performance across social networks, including X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and Bluesky.
Rather watch a video? Check out the tutorial: Understanding the Post Performance Report
Customizing the report
You can use the filters in the Filter Menu to customize the data you see in the Post Performance Report. Choose from the following filters:
- Profiles - choose the profiles you want to view data for in the report.
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Post Types - choose to include all post types or filter to network-specific post types like Reels, Quote Posts, Ad Posts or Shorts
- Content Types - choose content types like video, photo, document, link or choose to include all content types in the report.
- Tags - choose any internal tags that you want to view post data for. This filter is only available for Premium Analytics customers.
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Published Status - choose what published status you want to see from Published, which includes all published posts across all networks, Boosted posts for Facebook and TikTok, and Unpublished posts for Facebook.
- Hide deleted posts - use this toggle to hide posts deleted natively from X or posts deleted from Sprout for LinkedIn, Facebook and Pinterest. Due to network limitations, regardless of your toggle selection, Instagram Business Profile posts and Instagram Stories will always appear.
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Authors - select the post author to better understand the performance of your teams’ publishing efforts.
You can also customize the report date range by clicking the Published Date Range box in the top right of the report. Then select a preset or set a custom date range using the dropdown.
Facebook Unpublished and Boosted filters
The Unpublished filter focuses on Facebook posts and enables you to differentiate between published and unpublished Facebook posts. Unpublished posts are more commonly referred to as “dark posts.” If you aren’t familiar with dark posts, read this overview for more details.
The Boosted filter only applies to the Post post type. For a post to be considered boosted on Facebook, it must have at least one paid impression. Facebook Ad Posts don’t appear when you select this filter.
TikTok Boosted filter
Organic TikTok videos boosted through a TikTok Ad Account, or “sparked” are included in the Boosted filtered results. Spark Ads use organic TikTok posts created by influencers or content creators, and the ad is shown from the creator’s own account. These ads require an authorization code from the creator and cannot be edited once they're live. The duration of a Spark Ad campaign is tied to the authorization code, which can range from 7 to 365 days.
Viewing the Report
You have two options when it comes to viewing the data in your Post Performance Report. You can either view this report as a list of content for a specified date range, or as a post-focused view to see your posts as they appear on your networks.
To switch between the views, click the view toggle to select the list or post-focused.
For the list view, you can sort the available data by clicking the ascending and descending arrows next to the column name.
For the post-focused view, you can select ascending or descending, and then refine the view by selecting an additional metric like Average Reach per Post.
You can also export these views into PDFs so your stakeholders can see how your content performed and how it looked.
Additionally, you can perform some message actions on the posts that appear in your Report. You can tag posts, start team conversations or take more actions by clicking on the overflow menu on a post.
Understanding report metrics
The Post Performance report contains metrics from the native networks, along with unified metrics to help you review the overall performance of your social activities across all networks.
Note: The metrics in this report only includes activity that occurred on posts that were published during the time period you select.
Some unified metrics that are important to know are:
- Comments - this metric includes Instagram Story Replies and received X @replies.
- Shares - this metric includes re-posts (excludes posts and quote shares).
- Reactions - this metric includes X and Instagram Likes.
- Post Link Clicks - this metric includes all LinkedIn Post Clicks.
For more details about the different metrics contained in this report, hover over the metric name in the table for a definition. The definition provides details on how the metric is calculated along with the networks being counted for the metric.
If you want even more detail, click Report Glossary to get a breakdown of each metric available in the report.
TikTok Metrics
TikTok offers additional data about the origin of your video views. To access this breakdown, select Impressions from the dropdown menu. A video view in TikTok is the best approximation of an Impression. You can also choose Engagement Rate Per Impression.
Exporting the report
The Post Performance Report is an excellent report to share with your stakeholders to show the impact of your social posts. You can export this report as a CSV to share. Any filters you set, along with the date range, appear in your CSV export.
The columns included in this report are broken down in the following table.
| Column Name | Definition |
| Date | The date the post was published. |
| Post ID | The identification number of the post. |
| Network | The network the post was published to. |
| Post Type | The categorization of the post. This can be Post, Quote Tweet, X @reply, Facebook Ad Post, Instagram Story or Pinterest Save. |
| Content Type | The primary content associated with the post. This can be a video, photo, link, IG carousel or text only post. |
| Profile | The profile that published the post. |
| Sent by | The author of the post. This is only applicable if published through Sprout. |
| Link | The link to the post. |
| Post | The text of the post. |
| Linked Content | Links included within the post. |
| Impressions | Impressions is the number of times your post or story was displayed to a user during its lifetime. This includes organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Organic Impressions | Organic Impressions is the number of times that your post or Instagram story was organically displayed to a user during its lifetime. |
| Paid Impressions | Paid Impressions is the number of times that your post was displayed to a user through paid distribution, such as an ad or a boosted post, during its lifetime. |
| Reach | Reach is the number of unique users who were shown your post, Instagram story or Instagram Video during its lifetime. |
| Organic Reach | Organic Reach is the number of unique users to whom each of your posts or Instagram stories were organically shown during its lifetime. |
| Paid Reach | Paid Reach is the average number of unique users to whom each of your posts were displayed through paid distribution during its lifetime |
| Potential Reach | Potential Reach is the number of estimated users to whom your post was displayed during its lifetime. If your post is retweeted (without comment) by any of your followers, then their follower count would be added to the post’s potential reach estimate. |
| Engagement Rate (per impression) | Engagement Rate (per Impression) is the number of times users engaged with your post or story as a percentage of impressions. This indicates how engaged people are with your content. This includes both organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Engagements | Engagements is the total number of times users liked, commented, and saved your post and replied to your story during the post's lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Reactions | Reactions is the number of users who liked or reacted to your post during its lifetime. |
| Likes | Likes is the number of likes received on your Instagram post or Instagram Video. This includes organic activity only. |
| Dislikes | Dislikes is the number of times that users disliked your YouTube video since the video was published. |
| Love Reactions | Love Reactions is the number of users who reacted with a love reaction to your post during its lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity. |
| Haha Reactions | Haha Reactions is the number of users who reacted with a haha reaction to your post during its lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity. |
| Wow Reactions | Wow Reactions is the number of users who reacted with a wow reaction to your post during its lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity. |
| Sad Reactions | Sad Reactions is the number of users who reacted with a sad reaction to your post during its lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity. |
| Angry Reactions | Angry Reactions is the number of users who reacted with an angry reaction to your post during its lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity. |
| Comments | Comments is the number of comments received or sent on your Instagram post or Instagram Video. This includes both organic and and paid activity where possible. |
| Shares | Shares is the number of times that users shared your post during the post's lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Saves | Saves is the number of times users saved your post during its lifetime. This includes organic activity only. |
| Post Link Clicks | Post Link Clicks is the number of times that users clicked on the link in your post during the post’s lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Other Post Clicks | Other Post Clicks is the number of times that users clicked on the content in your post, excluding the link, during the post’s lifetime. This includes clicks on the media, hashtags, detail expand, and user profile from your post. This includes both organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Post Clicks (All) | Post Link Clicks is the number of times that users clicked on the link in your post during its lifetime. |
| Other Engagements | Other Engagements is the number of times during the post’s lifetime that users engaged with your post in other ways. This includes such engagements as poll votes, app install attempts, app opens, and follows from your post. This includes both organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Negative Feedback | Negative Feedback is the number of times that users hid or reported the post as spam during its lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Subscribers Gained from Video | Subscribers Gained from Video is the number of times users subscribed to your YouTube channel from your video since the video was published. |
| Annotation Clicks | Annotation Clicks is the number of times annotations were clicked by users in your YouTube video since the video was published. |
| Card Clicks | Card Clicks is the number of times cards were clicked by users in your YouTube video since the video was published. |
| Video Views | Video Views is the number of times that your video was viewed for at least 3 seconds during the post’s lifetime. This includes both organic and paid activity where possible. |
| Organic Video Views | Organic Video Views is the number of times that users organically viewed your post’s video during its lifetime. |
| Paid Video Views | Paid Video Views is the number of times that users viewed your post’s video for at least 3 seconds after a paid promotion during its lifetime. |
| Partial Video Views | Partial Video Views is the number of times that users viewed your post's video for at least 3 seconds, but no more than 30 seconds and not to the end of the video, during its lifetime. |
| Organic Partial Video Views | Organic Partial Video Views is the number of times that users viewed your post's video organically for at least 3 seconds, but no more than 30 seconds and not to the end of the video, during its lifetime. |
| Paid Partial Video Views | Paid Partial Video Views is the number of times that users viewed your post's video for at least 3 seconds after a paid promotion, but no more than 30 seconds and not to the end of the video, during its lifetime. |
| Full Video Views | The number of times users viewed your post's video for at least 30 seconds or nearly to end of the video if the video is shorter than 30 seconds, during its lifetime. |
| Organic Full Video Views | The number of times users viewed your post's video organically for at least 30 seconds, or nearly to the end of the video if the video is shorter than 30 seconds, during its lifetime. |
| Paid Full Video Views | The number of times that users viewed your post's video for at least 30 seconds, or nearly to the end of the video if the video is shorter than 30 seconds, after a paid promotion during its lifetime. |
| Story Taps Back |
Story Taps Back is the number of times people tapped back during the story’s lifetime to see the prior story. This includes organic activity only. Note: In order to collect data on a story, it must have reach of at least 5. |
| Story Taps Forward |
Story Taps Forward is the number of times people tapped forward during the story’s lifetime to see the next story. This includes organic activity only. Note: In order to collect data on a story, it must have reach of at least 5. |
| Story Exits |
Story Exits is the number of times people exited your story during its lifetime. This includes organic activity only. Note: In order to collect data on a story, it must have reach of at least 5. |
| Video Added to Playlists | Video Added to Playlists is the number of times that users added your video to any YouTube playlist since the video was published. |
| Subscribers Lost from Video | Subscribers Lost from Video is the number of times users unsubscribed to your channel from your video since the video was published. |
| Video Removed from Playlists | Video Removed from Playlists is the number of times that users removed your video from any YouTube playlists since the video was published. The video could have been removed from the video owner's playlist or from other channels' playlists. The metric value includes the number of times that your video was removed from default playlists like the "Watch Later" playlist. This metric returns an absolute number, meaning that if a user adds your video to a playlist, removes it, adds it again and then removes it again, the metric value reflects the video being removed from a playlist twice. |
| Tags | Tags is a list of the tags applied to the messages in Sprout. |
| SproutLink Clicks | SproutLink Clicks is the number of clicks received to your SproutLink in Bio site for the reporting period you selected. |
Note: You can determine which networks will include Paid activity by viewing this article.
If you’re a Premium Analytics customer you can customize your CSV export. There are three options you can use to customize:
- All Metrics - this export includes all available post metrics.
- Table View - this export includes only the metrics you select to appear in the table.
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Custom - this export option includes only the metrics you select to include in the export, regardless if they appear in the table or not.
Premium Analytics Additional Features
The Premium Analytics add-on unlocks additional functionality in your Post Performance Report. With Premium Analytics, you can search for specific keywords in your posts, apply tags to posts directly from this report and select the metrics you want to view.
Using Post Text Search
You can use Post Text Search in the report to type in a keyword search for specific posts. By default, a single keyword is considered an exact match. If you want to have an exact match on a phrase, be sure to include quotes at the beginning and end of the phrase you're searching for.
To clear your search, click X in the search bar.
Applying Tags
You can add Campaign and Label Tags directly to posts that appear in this report. Adding tags here ensures that your posts are associated with the appropriate campaigns and labels and can take your reporting deeper by analyzing your tagged posts.
Selecting metrics
An additional benefit of Premium Analytics includes the ability to select and sort by the metrics that matter most to you and your team. You can also hover over metrics as you're selecting them to get a definition of the networks the metric applies to and more details.
To select and edit metrics:
- Click into the Sort By dropdown.
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Click Customize Sorting Metrics. Your selected metrics appear.
- Scroll and navigate through the list to remove metrics or select new metrics to appear in the report.
- Scroll back to the top and drag and drop the metrics you selected in the order you want them to appear.
Employee Advocacy data in the report
If you have a connected Advocacy account, you can view the following new columns available within the Post Performance Report:
- Advocacy Shares
- Advocacy Potential Reach
- Advocacy Engagements
- Advocacy Story Views
- Advocacy Likes
For any posts sent from Sprout to Advocacy, these columns will show the lifetime value of the post in Advocacy. If a post has been sent over to Advocacy multiple times, the metrics will show the sum of all stories based on that post.
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