INBOUND15

How to Measure Your Social Activities Using Google Analytics

Michael StelznerFounder, Social Media Examiner

INBOUND15

Are you a marketer?

Can you prove your social media

activities are driving business

objectives?

@mike_stelzner

Plan on taking pictures of key slides!

Getting to know you…

INBOUND15

The struggle of social media marketers

INBOUND15

Where should we focus our

efforts?

How can prove our value?

Should we stop focusing on a

platform?

Is it all working?

Can you relate?

INBOUND15

What Google tells you out of the box

INBOUND15

How much traffic comes from your activities vs. organic?– False assumptionsAre your social media updates helping drive business goals?Are your actions improving or declining?What types of updates:– Drive most traffic– Lead to conversions

What it doesn’t tell you

What is Google UTM tracking

How to track social traffic and conversions

How to interpret the data and act

What we’ll cover

INBOUND15

You’ll know how your efforts

contribute to traffic and goals

You’ll be able to spot trends

You’ll be able to test

You can prove your investment

in social is worth it!

Benefits of UTM tracking

INBOUND15

2 Before you can get started

INBOUND15

Setup: google.com/analytics

INBOUND15

Need access from client?

INBOUND15

Want more basics?

INBOUND15

Setting up goals

INBOUND15

Step 1

INBOUND15

Step 2

INBOUND15

Step 3

INBOUND15

3 UTM tracking: setup

INBOUND15

Google Analytics CAN BE

crazy complicated

We’ll focus on what you

need to know to fly and

land

It’s really ALL you need to

know

Just what you need to know

INBOUND15

UTM = Urchin Traffic Monitor

Secret sauce that connects any activity into Google Analytics

Does so by providing extra code on the end of a URL

Google UTM tracking

INBOUND15

Example

INBOUND15

Helps us know what is working!!

We can now track the following for ANY shared:

– Number of sessions– New users– Time on site– Conversions (goal)!– How your efforts impact an articles page views– Can track over time

What UTM tracking does

INBOUND15

Example: Traffic analysis

INBOUND15

Example: Conversions from our Tweets

INBOUND15

Link to Google’s UTM builder:

SocialMediaExaminer.com/utm

How to build a tracking URL

INBOUND15

Standardize on your UTM parameters– Upper and lower case are different

• Facebookpage, FacebookPage, facebookpage

– Create something unique to you!!• Others may use the same

Have a UTM librarian

Important factors

INBOUND15

Source:– Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google, LinkedIn

Medium:– TwitterPage, FacebookPage, PinterestPage, GooglePage, LinkedInPage

Campaign:– New, Evergreen, Paid

Content (used rarely):– BigImage, SmallImage, SquareImage

UTM parameters we use for social

INBOUND15

4 What to do with the data

INBOUND15

Start using UTM for

ALL updates

UTM tracked traffic is

no longer classified

under Social in Google

Analytics

Important factors

INBOUND15

Examine trends– Traffic from our social increasing or decreasing, on channel X?– Why?

What’s happening on the organic side?– Up or down, why?

Testing– Evergreen vs. new– Type of posts: topic x, topic y– Image type…

Here’s what you can do

INBOUND15

Getting your data

INBOUND15

Date analysis

INBOUND15

Secondary dimensions

Landing page will reveal popular content

from that particular medium

INBOUND15

Secondary dimensions

INBOUND15

Secondary dimensions

Search by campaign to explore “types” of

content that performs best

INBOUND15

Secondary dimensions

INBOUND15

Social team’s contributionNetwork Organic Social Team TOTAL

Facebook 28,973 87,769 (75%) 116,742

Twitter 35,761 16,658 (31%) 52,419

LinkedIn 8,166 5,752 (41%) 13,918

Google+ 3,061 5,620 (65%) 8,681

Pinterest 5,256 1,973 (27%) 7,229

Snip.ly 5,168 5,168

SumoMe 9,518 9,518

Total 90,735 122,940 (58%) 213,675

Our efforts (total sessions)

INBOUND15

Month over month changesNetwork May June Change

Facebook 100,050 87,769 Down 12%

Twitter 16,080 16,658 Up 3%

LinkedIn 7,660 5,752 Down 25%

Google+ 5,922 5,620 Down 5%

Pinterest 1,307 1,973 Up 51%

TOTAL 131,019 117,772 Down 10%

INBOUND15

What content worksNetwork May

NEWMayEvergreen

JuneNEW

June Evergreen

Facebook

33,673 66,289 30,497 57,227

Twitter 8,924 7,154 9,212 7,443

LinkedIn 4,759 2,900 5,032 720

Google+ 2,074 3,896 2,769 2,851

Pinterest 1,125 182 1,830 142

Total: 50,555 80,421 49,340 68,383

INBOUND15

Data gives you power!

INBOUND15

There’s a lot it can do – You can focus on what I showed you

You know how your efforts contribute to traffic

and goals

You can spot trends

You can test

You can prove your investment in social is worth

it!

Now you can prove it!

INBOUND15

Thank you!@mike_stelzner