2. Jellyfish POV
Google Analytics | Social media tracking just got better
Introduction
It’s recently been announced that rolling out in the coming weeks’,
a new Social Measurement section is being added to Google
Analytics. These don’t yet show for most accounts but as they do
start to appear I’d encourage you to have a play around with them,
they look great!
Some of you may remember a few months back Google invited
social networks to integrate their platforms with Google Analytics.
We’re now seeing how this is really beneficial for those who have
opted in and how Google’s Social Data Hub is going to pull the data
together.
The new reports are located in the traffic sources section of Google
Analytics. There are six reports that can be used to help you
optimise social media campaigns:
1. Overview
2. Sources
3. Pages
4. Conversions
5. Plug ins
6. Visitors Flow
Collectively being referred to as the ‘The Social Reports’, they are
going to be powerful helping you understand what pages and
content on your website your visitors are choosing to share, what’s
being said about your company (we love this) & conversions being
driven by social networks (both last click and assisting other
channels).
Sounds good, so let’s take a closer look at some of our favourite
features and how they manifest themselves in the Google Analytics
interface.
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3. Jellyfish POV
Google Analytics | Social media tracking just got better
The overview
The overview report is a neat graphical representation that reminds
me a little of a giant eyeball (it’s actually pretty useful)!
It provides an easy to absorb view of the contribution your social
campaigns are making in terms of both last click and assisted
conversions (both compared to the overall total):
All conversions
Doesn’t immediately convert but the visitor later
returns and converts
Referrals that lead to conversions immediately
This is going to be really powerful helping paint the picture as to
whether your social activity is reaching customers initially but then
who then later come back and convert through another channel. It
also provides an instant view as to the extent of the impact your
social activity is having overall across your business.
The sources report
The sources report breaks down the traffic being driven to your
website by each of your channels and also shows a selection of
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4. Jellyfish POV
Google Analytics | Social media tracking just got better
useful metrics, including some great engagement metrics that help
you understand which of your social activities are successfully
engaging your visitors and which ones really suck!
You may notice an interesting looking icon appear on your reports
(above). This little symbol indicates this is a social partner that has
opted into the new Google Analytics Social Hub.
If you click on this icon you can actually see the URL’s from your site
that people are sharing on that specific social network. You can
further drill into each of the reports and specifically view
information relating to the exact kind of interaction taking place.
At first these are a bit confusing as the terminology is specific to the
social networks (as it’s provided by the social site directly) and not
the normal Google Analytics terms you’ll be familiar with, but it
won’t take long before you’re up to speed!
Activity Stream
This is probably my favourite of the new reports and one I can see
being a winner when it comes to providing clients with something
they find interesting (and different).
Essentially networks can integrate their activity streams like +1,
votes and comments into the new Google Analytics reports.
The Activities Stream tab (located within the sources report) shows
how people are engaging socially with your website content off
your site across the social web (as per below).
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5. Jellyfish POV
Google Analytics | Social media tracking just got better
This is something totally new for GA and offers you the opportunity
to find out what people really think of your brand, find influential
users that drive traffic to your site and even engage with them.
For content that was shared publicly, you can see the URLs they
shared, how and where they shared it, and what they said.
Currently, activities are reported for Google+ and across a growing
list of well know social brands such as Badoo, Reddit, Delicious &
Digg.
Conversions report
The conversions report lets you start to dig a little deeper into your
data. Here you can really see the contribution each of your specific
social sources makes to your businesses bottom line. Say you have
an active Twitter campaign driving lots of visitors to the website,
but that traditionally you’ve not seen many last click conversions.
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6. Jellyfish POV
Google Analytics | Social media tracking just got better
You’ve always thought your Tweets generate interest and now you
can be sure exactly how they are assisting overall performance.
The reports show both the assisted conversions e.g. if a visitor
came to your site from first a social source, then later returned and
made a purchase and last interaction conversions plus a ratio to
compare the two values.
Social plug ins
So you’ve added social plug ins to your website, now you want to
find out if anyone is actually using them?
This handy report is specifically designed to make it easy to view
which content you produce is liked by your consumers and
subsequently shared, brilliant to help you hone in on doing more of
what works.
This is just some of our personal favourites appearing in the social
reports, no doubt over time more will surface. Hopefully everyone
will have access to these over the next couple of weeks.
If you are in any doubt about the ways in which you might turn this
latest Google Analytics update to your advantage, contact our
analytics team directly at jamie.hammond@jellyfish.co.uk or ask
your account team for more information.
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