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Jellyfish POV Google Analytics Social media tracking just got better!

30|03| 2012

Jellyfish POV Google Analytics – Social media just got better!

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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.

Jellyfish POV Google Analytics – Social media just got better!

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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):

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

Doesn’t immediately convert but the visitor later returns and converts

Referrals that lead to conversions immediately

All conversions

Jellyfish POV Google Analytics – Social media just got better!

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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).

Jellyfish POV Google Analytics – Social media just got better!

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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.

Jellyfish POV Google Analytics – Social media just got better!

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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.