How to Track Social Media Traffic With Google Analytics

Social marketing has become a part of most every business and individual’s life, and Google Analytics has changed the way companies can monitor their social networking sites. Using the features contained within this program, a company can measure sales and exchanges, but also receive new insights into how visitors use their social networking sites. It can also track how a person found the site, as well as ways to entice them to come back again.

Most businesses are interested in a return on investment and with social networking that can be difficult to measure. Using Google Analytics, a company can track many aspects through the social reporting feature. The reporting features will give three types of information:

• Classify the significance of movement approaching from social sites and classify how they lead to straight conversations or help in making upcoming conversions.
• Comprehend social happenings occurring together on and off of the social media site to allow a company to enhance user interaction and intensify social enactment gauges.
• Make improved, more effective choices in the social media advertising programs.

The Social reporting features allow a company to see all the metrics together and have an overall picture of the effectiveness of their social marketing campaigns. The new reports will show how much conversation is actually being generated on your social outlets.

Google Analytics will allow a company to see what kind of customers they are attracting. They will be able to chart sales and find out exactly how the users are engaging with their sites.

With new networking sites popping up daily, it is important for a company to track return on investment in terms of time and effort spent on building a social presence.

Start Analyzing!

In your Google Analytics account, under Traffic Sources, you will see a link titled “Social”. From there you start seeing how much traffic is arriving from each of the social media sites, what pages they are visiting, and if you have plugins enabled on your site, which ones are sending the most interaction. You can also create goals and funnels to track more explicit information.

Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer interested in social media marketing and industrial solutions. She works with Process Sensors and writes about internet marketing in her spare time.