Comparing Date Ranges in Network Reports in Sprout Social | Sprout Bites

Hi, I'm Shawna Staveley, and in this Sprout Bites video, I'm going to show you how to see all your social media performance in one place by using custom date comparison ranges inside Sprout's Network Reports to instantly show period-over-period growth. Knowing your numbers is one thing, but knowing whether they're getting better is what really matters. Sprout makes that incredibly easy with the date comparison feature inside Network Reports. Let me show you.

Head over to Reports in the left navigation and select a specific network. I'll use Facebook as an example. Once you're in the report, find the date range selector at the top. Choose a custom date range. In this example, I'm using Last Month.

Now here's the next key step: choose a comparison period. You can choose a custom range or the previous year, but in this example, I'm going to choose Compare to the previous period. That's it! Now you can see your period-over-period changes right there in the report.

You can see that here with the green arrow, which means the metric is up, along with the percentage change based on that comparison period. If you hover, you can see the actual numbers. So you can instantly see your period-over-period growth, or the results for any date range comparison period, right there in the report. Every metric, including impressions, engagements, and link clicks, has a percentage change showing you exactly how you're trending compared to the previous period.

That's it: no exporting, no manual calculations, no switching between tabs. Everything you need to understand your performance growth is right there in one place. Next time you're in a network report, try toggling on that comparison period. It takes seconds and instantly tells you whether your performance is moving in the right direction. Give it a try!