Measure the Social Impact on Your Brand Via Google Analytics:

It’s safe to assume we all agree that social media is a valuable asset to any marketing campaign. The question on everyone’s mind is ‘How do I know social is to thank for that sale?’ As social media allocation increases across marketing budgets, the question for return on investment becomes more crucial. Google Analytics gets us closer to answering this question.

Recently, Google Analytics rolled out a new set of Social Reports, which is in addition to the currently available Social Interaction Tracking. These new reports allow marketers to connect the dots between social media and business metrics allowing you to better measure the value of investing in social marketing.

 

Five sections break up the new Social Reports dashboard:

 

1. Overview Report: shows social performance at a glance and its impact on conversions

2. Conversion Report: tells you which of your goals are impacted by social

3. Social Sources: shows engagement from different sites

4. Social Plugins: see what content is being shared and liked the most

5. Activity Stream: explore chatter outside your site

 

OVERVIEW:

Displays a social value visualizer that compares the number and monetary value of all your goal completions against those that resulted from social referrals – both as last interaction, and assisted. For example, a site visit from a social channel may result in conversion right away or it may assist a later conversion. Referrals that lead to conversions immediately are labeled as Last Interaction Social Conversion. If a referral from a social channel generates a later conversion, meaning the user didn’t convert straight from the original click, it’s referred to as an Assisted Social Conversion.

CONVERSIONS:

This is where you can look at your social conversions by channel and detect which source is driving the most transactions for your brand. An effective way to determine social value is to look at the conversions after social content has been published to see if they have increased. Also in the Conversions report, you can set up brand goals and see how social impacts those goals. For example, if your goal is ‘email sign-ups,’ you can attribute how many sign-ups came from social referrals. Easily set up and track the progress of your goals within Google Analytics.

SOCIAL SOURCES:

Simply put, this report shows you consumer behavior by social channel. You can see which social network is driving more conversions for your brand and create a marketing strategy that aligns with the results. For example, if you deployed a social campaign surrounding a new product, you can track the social referral transactions from each network to determine which one worked best for your brand.

SOCIAL PLUGINS:

Track the activity of each of your social plugins to determine which ones are driving the most conversions on your site. For example, if you publish content surrounding a new product, track which social platform your content is most commonly shared. You can also use the results as a key learning for creating similar content to what was most popular in previous campaigns.

ACTIVITY STREAM:

The previous reports focus on the impact social networks have on site conversions. The Activity Stream shows how users are engaging with your content off your site and on other social platforms. For content that is shared publicly, you can see the URL that they shared the content to and what they said about the content. As of now, these activities are reported for Google+, Badoo, Disqus, Echo, Hatena and Meetup. Google has announced that this is a growing list.

 

You can now find these new social reports under the Standard Reporting Tab in Google Analytics.

 

 

Authored by: Piper McEndarffer, Director of Social Marketing, Venda Inc.