KimberMedia

#Tuesday Tips: Social Media Measuring – Google Analytics (Part 4 of 4)

Posted by
in #TuesdayTips, Google
April 3, 2012

Part 4 of a Four-Part Series

Social Media Measuring: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Google Analytics

Google Analytics & Social Media

Always known to be on the cutting edge of, well, just about everything, Google has rolled out some fantastic new features for its Analytics service.  Today, we’ll cover the new features, show you how they work, help you track the metrics and offer some advice on improving the effectiveness of your social media strategies.

First, if you’re not using Google Analytics, you probably should.  Today, 82.2% of websites (whose traffic analysis solution is known) use Google Analytics.  That amounts to more than 55% of all website in world.  It’s easy to setup but call us if you need help.

Please note: the remainder of this post will assume the reader is already familiar with Google Analytics.  Need a basic overview first?  Try this Introduction to Google Analytics.

Although there is virtually no end to the information Google Analytics provides, we’ll cover two key areas vital to the success of your social media efforts.

Social Analytics

In the left menu, select Audience > Social.  Here, you’ll find three new areas:

Engagement

Here, you’ll find an overview of the visits on your site during which one of your social activities was triggered.  For each visit, the first social interaction (“action”) triggers the engagement, while any others do not count additionally.  Were

Action

This chart show a list of all the actions (such as liking, sharing, etc.) that visitor have done to engage with your website from a social media point of view.

Keep in mind, you’ll need to create triggers associated with these actions in order to accurately track them.

Pages

This is a list of pages that the Social Action occurred on.  Keep an eye on this information to see which pages are most likely (or least likely) to encourage visitors to interact with you.

Make periodic adjustments to your call to action, content, or available social actions as necessary to maximize social engagement.

Now, here’s the rub: by default, Google Analytics will track only Google +1 actions on your site.  If you need to track other action (and you do), you’ll need to add Social Analytics plug-ins to your Google Analytics tracking code.

The details of setting this up fall outside the scope of this post, but I want to be sure you’re aware that you’ll want to do this.  If you know how to set this up (see how to add social analytics for details), dive in; otherwise, contact your favorite professional and ask to have this done.

Referral Sources

Often overlooked, but very important.  Driving traffic to your website is still a key performance indicator for any online marketing strategy, and social media is a great way to do this.

To see the traffic your website is receiving as a direct result of your social media presence, we’ll use the standard Referral Sources report, but we’ll filter it for the social media websites we’re getting traffic from.

In the left menu, Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals.  In the report that initially comes up, you’ll see all the referral traffic your site is currently getting.  To narrow this down, we’ll use the Advanced Filter function.

  • Look for the  and click advanced.
  • In the configuration area, set the criteria to Include > Source > Matching RegExp
  • Then, we’ll enter the criteria to narrow down the results. For this report, I’m using the following, but feel free to edit as you see fit.
    facebook|quora|linkedin|t.co|stumbleupon|twitter|reddit|^t.co$|^google.com$

Your report should now look something like this:

Of course, you’ll want to keep an eye on this traffic, and evaluate it monthly to determine what aspects of your social media strategy are generating traffic to your website, and tweak those tactics over time.

Needless to say, there’s a lot more than what we’ve covered above to effective social media measurement and analysis, but this will give you a great start toward getting a solid return on your social media efforts.

We welcome your questions below, or you contact us directly.

Read the rest of this series:
Social Media Measuring: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Google Analytics

Sources:

  • http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ta-googleanalytics/all/all
J. Michael Roach is a down-to-earth problem solver who thrives on concept and strategy development – the bedrock of all successful marketing campaigns. In addition to his duties as Creative Director at Caledon Virtual, Roach also serves as a Principal at KimberMedia, Consulting Director of Brand Communications for PrintNinja and Chief Executive Officer at RedBanyan. Roach has also served as the President of the Mid-Missouri chapter of the American Advertising Federation. Prior to Caledon Virtual, Roach was founder and president of IDPgroup, and Brand Manager for Battenfeld Technologies, an outdoor product engineering and design firm. He has been developing successful branding campaigns, web sites and other marketing communications since 1994.