Social media is hard work.
In order to be successful on social media, you need to invest a lot of time and energy into creating connections and engaging with your followers. It is also important to be consistent in your posts.
The goals of social media marketing usually include increasing brand awareness and driving website traffic. However, it is not clear how effective social media marketing is in achieving these goals. It is possible that social media marketing brings visitors to the website, but it is not clear what these visitors do on the website.
The social media metrics that are most important are likes, shares, comments, and followers. Although there is a lot of data available, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people will be engaged on the website.
Content marketing metrics that also to correlate with business outcomes include share of voice, leads generated, and website traffic.
You can see how your social media activity is affecting your website traffic by tracking social media in Google Analytics. This lets you see which social networks, shares, and content are having the most impact and how.
How Much Social Media Traffic Are We Getting?
In the Acquisition > Site Traffic > All Channels report, social traffic can be found under the “Acquisition” section.
What are some big-picture questions that you have and how fast are the answers?
The Channels report shows that Social is one of the “Default Channel Groupings.” This means that it is one of the major sources of traffic, along with Direct, Organic Search, Referral, and Email.
You can see how much social media traffic is compared to other sources by looking at it from a high level.
What is the social media traffic volume?
What are the engagement rates for visitors coming from social media? (bounce rate, pages/session, avg session duration)
What is the goal conversion rate for social media visitors?
Don’t be surprised if…
- Conversion rates for visitors from social media are lower than those of the other traffic sources. Social media visitors tend to have lower intent than search or direct visitors.
- The numbers may be very low. If so, just set a more considerable range. Beware of seasonality and changes in marketing activity.
Social Media Networks That Are Driving More Traffic
To see each social network, you can look in the Acquisition > Site Traffic > All Channels report.
The next level of reporting is one click away.
To view the next report, click on the “Social” link in the first column.
The list is sorted by the number of visits. The “Social Network” section is the most important part of the website. It is a list of every social network that has sent visitors to this site. The list is sorted by the number of visits.
You can easily compare these social networks to see which one is attracting more visitors and which is engaging them more.
In order to better see the differences, switch over to the comparison view. In this view, you can select any metric you want to see (such as “users”) to compare between social networks.
Don’t be surprised if…
- You may see surprise traffic from social networks where you aren’t even active. Those networks may not be part of your strategy, but they still contain links to your site.
- Instagram doesn’t bring in much traffic, but those visitors are highly engaged.
- Pinterest is a surprisingly good source of traffic!
How Traffic Is Going to a Blog Post or Landing Page?
In order to filter for social traffic in the Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages reports, you will need to select the social source from the “Source” drop-down menu.
If you’re looking to promote your content through social media, you’ll want to take a look at the Landing Pages report to see how much traffic is being driven to a specific URL from social media sources.
This is the process you need to follow.
Find the Page in the Landing Pages Report
The document can be found by going to the “Behavior” tab, selecting “Site Content,” and then choosing “Landing Pages.” Find the URL either by scrolling through the list or by using a quick filter.
Click the URL to Drill Down Into the Report
Locate the URL on the page and click it. This will take you to a report with only that one URL.
Add a “Secondary Dimension”
Open the dropdown menu located above the first column. This will allow you to add data from a different report into this report in a second column. In the search box located within the drop-down menu, search for “source” and click “Source / Medium” to add that data to your report.
Browse through all the traffic sources for the given URL, including email, organic searches, and direct visits. From there, only consider the social sources of traffic.
Although some of the “social” sources appear to be referral traffic, it is difficult to attribute this traffic to specific networks because it comes from many different sources including apps, websites, URL shorteners, and redirects.
A filter will clean it up.
Use an (Advanced) Filter to See Just Social Traffic
Click “Advanced” next to the filter box.
We need to use “Matches RegExp” to list a bunch of options: LinkedIn OR Facebook OR Twitter.
In order to search for either “A or B” using analytics, you need to make use of the vertical line character, more commonly referred to as the pipe. Doing so allows you to specify “A|B|C” as the regular expression for “or”, which can come in quite handy.
Shortcut! It should catch everything:
social|face|twitter|^t.co|linked|pinterest|youtube|quora|reddit|imgur|tumblr|stumbleupon|flickr|bit.ly|tinyurl
This feature allows you to see how much traffic a specific URL received from social sources.
This report may be difficult or time-consuming to create. Keep it in a safe or easily accessible place! To save this report for future reference, click the Save button at the top of the page. You can later find it in Customizations > Saved Reports. Or, add it to a Google Analytics dashboard.
Don’t be surprised if…
- You need to keep adjusting your filter to catch everything.
- The trendline is very spiky. Social is an unpredictable channel, right?
The Ultimate Guide to the New Google Analytics Social Reports
Although social media lacks the clarity of other marketing channels, it’s still an incredibly important part of the puzzle. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer free traffic, scale well, and don’t require any initial investment. The main issue with social media is that it’s difficult to track and measure results. Even though it’s not as clear as other marketing channels, social media is still a vital part of any marketing strategy.
Google Analytics has just released a new set of reports that will make it much easier to track social media traffic and see if your social media marketing efforts are paying off.
I’ll explain each new report in detail so that you know how to use them effectively. By the end of this, you should have a good understanding of the new Google Analytics social reports.
Where to Find the Social Reports
You’ll find the social reports in the Traffic Sources section of Google Analytics. Here’s the step-by-step:
- Log into Google Analytics and go to the standard reports of your site
- In the left sidebar, click “Traffic Sources”
- Then select “Social”
- Pick the social report you’d like to view
Overview
This is your “figure-out-if-anything-is-working-at-a-glance-report”.
I’m glad that Google Analytics has decided to include revenue and conversion data in an overview report. This will allow us to actually analyze what is working, rather than just looking at metrics that don’t tell us anything.
The benefits of social media are apparent from the beginning. You will be able to see if customers are being sent to you from social media platforms.
This is the total number of conversions your site has received from every traffic source.
You will also be able to see the total value that your goals have produced.
An assisted conversion happens when social media helps lead a person to your website, and they eventually convert into a paying customer. These conversions are important because they show that social media can be effective in driving traffic that leads to sales.
If I click on one of your tweets and go to your site, but then I leave without completing any goals, I’m just a social visit at this point. However, if I come back two days later and complete a goal, I am counted as an assisted social conversion.
The “Last Interaction Social Conversions” metric refers to conversions that resulted from visitors coming to your site from social media, and completing a goal (such as making a purchase) during that same visit.
If you have not assigned values to your goals, the system will report a value of $0 for each set of conversions.
What’s Missing?
The biggest downside to the social overview is that it won’t populate unless you have at least one goal active. So, if you’re using e-commerce tracking, the data won’t show up. The report will remain blank and prompt you to set up goals before any data can be displayed. Even though the diagram will show conversion and revenue data, it will be grayed out. Is this silly? Yes.
So what’s an e-commerce junkie to do?
You could define an obscure goal that will never be triggered in order to make their conversion data come through just fine and get rid of the popup. This is a double silly solution, but it will work.
At the bottom of the report, you’ll see previews of three other reports:
- Social Sources
- Pages
- Social Plugins
I suggest you avoid the previews and go straight to the main reports.
Social Sources
The Social Sources Report provides a detailed analysis of the traffic received from various social media networks. This report is useful in determining the amount of traffic that social networks generate.
Conversions are what you should be looking for, and we will cover that in the next section.
How Does Traffic Get Tagged as Social Media?
Google Analytics uses the referring URL from the visit to determine which social media network it came from. If the URL matches one of the domains associated with a social media network, it will appear in the social reports under that network.
Google Analytics uses a list of around 100 domains in order to attribute traffic to social networks. However, they have not released this list to the public yet. Therefore, there is no way of knowing if your social media campaigns are being accurately tracked until you see the traffic in your reports.
The benefit of this arrangement is that you won’t have to take any action for Google Analytics to begin gathering data for your social reports.
The data can be incomplete easily.
If you use a URL shortener like bit.ly or Buffer on your social media profiles, Google Analytics will not be able to tell that the traffic is coming from Facebook or Twitter. Instead, the traffic will be shown as coming from the URL shortener, which means it will not appear in your social reports.
Conversions
What do you think about making our social media marketing accountable? Engagement is great, but it doesn’t bring in money. The Conversion report will show you how much money each social network is bringing in.
Even if you do not have any revenue data, these reports are still valuable.
At a glance, we know that Facebook is dominating the social media scene. With this information, we can hold all of our marketing efforts accountable. That’s right, we can hold our social media accounts responsible. I know, it’s shocking.
Although the “Assisted vs. Last Interaction Analysis report” may sound confusing, it’s actually quite simple. The report compares the results of your marketing efforts that assisted in a conversion vs. the results of your marketing efforts that were the last interaction before a conversion. In other words, it shows you which marketing efforts helped guide a customer towards a conversion, and which marketing efforts were the final push that resulted in a conversion.
The most recent traffic source is usually credited when looking at conversions. So if someone visits a site through Twitter, leaves, then uses Google to find the company name two days later, the organic search would get credit. Twitter would get nothing.
The main issue with social media is that it doesn’t directly result in conversions or sales. It’s great for raising awareness, but it doesn’t close the deal, unlike search, email, and PPC. Social media introduces new people to a brand or product, but search, email, and PPC get the credit for the actual sale.
So social media is undervalued in your conversion data.
Good news! We have data that shows whether or not a traffic source helped with a conversion. This means that social media will now get credit for conversions even if it wasn’t the most recent traffic source.