Measure Social Media Marketing Using Google Analytics

With 57% of adults in the UK having joined a social network, online companies have begun to capitalise on this, realising the importance of social media as a marketing tool. As more and more firms set up their company pages, it is not enough to simply have a social media presence; instead, these profiles must be maintained and monitored on a regular basis. This in itself has become a subject of much discussion, with many highlighting the difficulties of measuring the success of this approach. One way around the problem is through the use of Google Analytics. As one of the most treasured applications throughout the online marketing world, Google Analytics provides helpful statistics that can also be used for social media platforms. Here’s how:

• One of the most obvious, but also most useful, ways Google Analytics can help drive forward your campaign is through traffic data. Through the Social Sources page it is possible to see quickly and clearly how many visitors are being driven towards your site from which networks. Based on this information, you can then make decisions on which sites to focus your efforts on, and which to abandon.

• It may even be worth delving into this further. Using this same tool, you can also discover which of your individual pages are best promoted by which network. For example, Facebook may be particularly effective for bringing visitors to your product pages, whilst Twitter may be more beneficial for directing traffic to your home page. These facts will help you decide which links to include within which platform, making your social media marketing campaign more effective as well as saving you time in the long run.

• The conversions report is another key area of Google analytics which should not be overlooked. This allows you to actually establish if your social media campaign is achieving the goals it was set up to reach. To get the best results here, it is best to set up a set of aims as early on as possible. These aims do not have to be sales or leads, but can be smaller or more customised achievements, such as filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter. This is ultimately the most effective way to see how your strategy is working and make alterations as and when needed.

Using Google Analytics is a vital step in moving away from more basic and superficial ways of gauging social media success, such as your number of likes and followers, towards a much more relevant way of assessing its worth, and should be considered by anyone setting up a digital marketing campaign.

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