How To Measure Social Media Traffic in Google Analytics
Many sites use Google Analytics to measure how their website is performing, but Google Analytics (Referred to as GA) does a poor job at capturing Social Media links that bring traffic to websites.
Why does Google Analytics Struggle to Measure Social Media Traffic?
By default, Google Analytics reports social media results as a general “referral” which treats any Social Media sharing as a website that linked to your content.
Without more detail, this makes it very challenging to measure the impact that just Social Media has for your website.
Social Media is hard to measure in Google Analytics because:
- Facebook Is Treated as a normal Referral Link Source
- Links clicked from Twitter.com’s web interface (or any web-based client) are Treated as Referrals as well.
- URL Shorteners show up as “Direct/None” traffic, meaning GA doesn’t know what to do with it!
The view below shows how the majority of your Twitter click-throughs appear in GA, assuming you use a URL shortener.
(All example graphics are from Jonathan Mumm’s Personal Blog, and are not Banyan Branch’s stats)
The “Direct/None” category also includes anyone who typed in your url in their browser.
If you appreciate Social Media or work in Social Media Marketing, here are ways you can help Google out and better measure the impact Social Media really has on your website.
Ways to Enhance Social Media Analytics in Google Analytics
#1 - Create Segments to Show Specific Types of Traffic
Segments are a great way to group your Google Analytics traffic into smaller segments. Some good examples of segments include “Traffic from Blogs”, “Social Media”, or “Email Campaigns”. (Link: 4 Good Social Media Segment ideas)
By using segments, you can drill into the analytics for just that portion of traffic. A further example could include “What pages on my site had the most visits from people linked from Blogs?”
Benefits of Segments:
- Segments do not change any of your incoming data.
- They are easy to create and modify at any time.
- They let you analyze all of your historical data.
Important Notes:
- Segments do not pull in any additional data, it simply uses what GA already has and presents it in a different format.
- Segments cannot categorize URL Shortener links until you Tag your links (see the next tip below).
How to Setup a Custom Segment:
- In your website’s dashboard, go to the top right where you see “Advanced Segments:” and click “All visits”.
- Click the link for “Create a new Advanced Segment”
- In the menu, search in the bar on the left for “Source” and grab it to the “Dimension or Metric” field. Test out the different conditions here, and don’t be afraid to use advanced operators like the OR symbol “|”. (twitter|facebook)
Here is the way this looks inside your Analytics after choosing your new segment.
#2 – Tag all of your Social Media Links with GA Tracking Data
Have you ever noticed this in a URL you’ve clicked: “utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tweet”? These “utm_” tags added to the URL are Google Analytics Tracking data that has been added to the URL.
For example, a URL of http://www.banyanbranch.com/?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=BlogPost&utm_campaign=MeasuringSocialMediaInGA gives Google the following additional data:
- Source = Blog
- Medium = BlogPost
- Campaign = MeasuringSocialMediaInGA (this post)
If anyone clicks this link, that traffic will be recorded in Google Analytics with the additional information above.
Benefits of Tagging Links:
- You can now record traffic from clicks via URL Shorteners! This gives GA the data it was previously not tracking.
- Sets of links can be grouped into Campaigns, so if you have an initiative you are working on, you can tag those links the same way and then create a custom segment as shown above to view how well just those campaign links are doing.
- Tagging specific links with different GA tags will allow you to see within GA exactly how each tweet or shortened URL performed. (You can use the “Content” tag for this)
- If you established and set-up Goals (which you should!), you will now be able to track which tweet converted to a sale, or how it correlates to whatever goals you are tracking.
Important Notes:
- Unless your have a tool that automatically adds tags, tags are often manually added via a webform.
- You must add the tracking code to the URL before you shorten it.
- Any social media sharing not using the GA Tags will not be caught in GA using this method. Tracking tags works good for tracking specific campaigns or outbound links that you are posting. Links and shortened URLS that other people make will not have these tags added.
- If people use your copy your Tagged URL and post it elsewhere, you can start to get inaccurate data. An example would be if someone takes your shortened url from Twitter and posts that on Facebook. Your visits in GA will report everything as Twitter traffic, even though it is coming from Facebook as well. This is a known problem that is not avoidable with any method of URL Tagging.
How to Setup:
How should I tag my links? (Link to Google’s Guide)
- Source: The publication where this link lives. (Examples: twitter, facebook, yelp, youtube)
- Medium: The type of traffic. (Examples: cpc, email, “social media”) - NOTE: Using “social media” only works if you are using Option 1 above – the custom “social media” filter. If you don’t have a filter, this can be, call it “tweet” or something similar.
- Campaign Name: Can be a campaign or specific initiative. (Examples: productA, PromotionX, “new blog”)
- Term/Content: This can be anything, and will be modified for each tweet you send. This should be unique to just that link. (Examples: 10_00am, 10_00am_tweet, tweet_signupnow)
Tools to help Tag your Links:
- Google’s Link Builder Tool – Google provides this tool that gives you a URL you can then take to any URL shortener, email campaign, or anywhere else.
- bit.ly Google Analytics Campaign Builder Tool – You will need to make a copy of this Google Spreadsheet to your own account to be able to use it.
- Hootsuite’s Advanced Parameters Field – Hootsuite Pro ($) has a feature that will auto-add any parameters you tell it to add, and those can change as much as you’d like.
Advanced Options for Expert Analytics Users
Advanced Option #1 – Create a Unique Landing Page Just for Social Media Traffic
Benefits of a Landing Page:
- You can target the page’s content specifically to your Social Media users.
- You know that Social Media is the primary traffic source for that page.
Important Notes:
- This is very time consuming and requires much more work to setup.
- DO NOT use this landing page as a “redirect” to another page on your site.
- If other people link to your specific landing page, it creates other sources of traffic that you aren’t expecting.
How to Setup:
Creating a landing page is outside of the scope for this article, but the idea is to create a page on your website specifically for use with your outbound links. Traffic to that page will hopefully only come from the links you make for it, allowing you to easily track how those campaign links performed.
Advanced Option #2 – Create a Custom Filter
Benefits of a Custom Filter:
- Easily see social media along side your existing GA traffic sources.
- Allows for greater manipulation of the data within GA.
- A Custom Filter will allow you redefine how traffic is categorized. This is great for creating a new Medium Category, say called “social media”.
Important Notes:
- Filters are not retroactive, so this is great if you are setting up a new site, or if you would like this data readily accessible in the future.
- WARNING! A filter will also change how your data is reported, so historical data could be affected. It is strongly recommended to create a duplicate profile for your GA account first. Unfortunately duplicate profiles are not retroactive either, so your new duplicate profile will only track stats after it is created.
- This will not categorize URL Shortener links unless used with URL Tagging as shown above.
How to Setup:
Now your Google Analytics account is ready to manage your Social Media Traffic, and you will be able to better analyze the impact that Social Media really has on your website.
Any questions / feedback? Leave them in the comments!
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