Did you know that social media spending will increase by 71 percent in the next 5 years? And did you know that 42.3 percent of marketers believe that social media has a significant impact on their businesses?
No matter your business or your targeted customers, adding social media to your marketing mix can take your company’s brand to the next level.
But here’s a brutal truth about social media marketing: A large number of brands fail to evaluate the impact of their social media marketing efforts effectively.
A 2018 CMO survey claimed that only 23.3% of marketers could quantitatively perceive the impact of social media marketing.
So the question is, how do marketers evaluate the =data of their social media marketing strategies? The answer is simple. Yes. It takes power to leverage Google Analytics.
This post will explain how to effectively use Google Analytics for social media marketing to evaluate your brand strategy.
What is Google Analytics?
Utilizing Google Analytics is one of the best ways to find out who is visiting your website. And when you link your site’s data to social media, you’ll be able to create an online traffic-driving engine for your asset.
It’s not an exaggeration. With Google Analytics, you can know exactly what type of content your audience is reacting to and which social networks they prefer. With that data, you can drive more traffic and visits to your website – as well as test social ROI.
You can also use Google Analytics to track important social media metrics with a few simple steps.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free site analytics dashboard. With it, you have access to a lot of insights about your website and its visitors.
Think of it as the machines a doctor uses to measure his patients’ vitamins. With Google Analytics, you will be able to assess the overall health of your website and identify areas that need to be fixed.
Here are some metrics and information you can get from the tool:
- How much traffic does your website get in total
- Websites from which your traffic came
- Individual page traffic
- Converted Lead Quantity
- The websites your leads came from
- Visitor demographic information (such as where they live)
- Whether your traffic is from a mobile phone or a desktop
That’s a good thing – but why is any of this important?
Simple: The more you are familiar with your audience and what they like, the more you will be able to give them the content they want.
That’s the difference between having a vending machine and a personal chef. With a vending machine, you get is what you get. The customer has no input on what goes in it and how the food tastes.
On the other hand, a private cook will listen to you and give you what you want. They can cater to what they cook according to your specific needs and wants.
That’s the difference between using and not using Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see what content you’re creating that excites your audience – allowing you to replicate that success.
Not using Google Analytics is like going on a road trip without a map – or even a destination. When you combine Google Analytics with social media, you can find out even more about what content will be successful.
Why Measure Your Social Media Traffic?
Traffic that comes from Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, YouTube, or other social media sources drives into content on your website and then triggers some sort of fulfillment such as leads, purchases, or whatever else you want to achieve with that traffic.
Your social media traffic will come from both paid and free sources. For example, Facebook traffic can come from paid ads, shared posts from your Page, and perhaps even group posts. The same can happen with Twitter, Linked In, and YouTube.
You can also look at social media traffic on a more granular level. For example, traffic on YouTube may come from specific parts of the site, such as cards, back-end, or description links.
You want to measure how all this social media traffic turns into content and ultimately to a completion goal. You can do this with Google Analytics and UTM.
How to Evaluate Your Social Media Traffic Data With Google Analytics?
By default, Google Analytics reports show the raw data on your social media traffic in a tabular view.
For ease of interpretation of the data, you may want to change the view of the report. In addition to table views, Google Analytics also supports the following views.
- Percentage: Displays a pie chart showing the total contribution for the chosen metric.
- Performance: As with a horizontal bar chart, it shows the relative performance of the selected metric.
- Comparison: Along with a bar chart, it shows the performance of the metric chosen for average.
- Term Cloud: Displays a visual representation of your website’s keywords. It is the best view option for interpreting your website keyword data.
- Pivot: This allows you to detect data trends that you could not determine otherwise. You can rearrange the data in the table by parsing the data on another dimension.
For example, you run an eCommerce site and want to track which social media sites contribute the most direct sales. You will get the data in many different ways.
For easy analysis, let us select the percentage view in your social media channel report.
Click on Percentage View on the Social Media Channel Report page. Then, choose Transactions as your primary metric. In the Contribution to Total field, select Revenue.
Now you can see a report sorted by the number of transactions. You can also see a pie chart showing the contribution of each social networking site to total commerce revenue. Similarly, you can also see other views for having a look to customized report that helps you interpret social media traffic data easily.