A new study has revealed that a mere 21% of companies measure their social media efforts. But how do you bridge the social media and ROI divide? Fortunately, in the coming weeks marketers will now be able to more accurately measure their social media through Google Analytics. Social Reports in Google Analytics will enable marketers to measure which social media channel drives the most returns and the tactics behind them that lead to goals being achieved. You can expect these analytics reports to be integrated into SocialMotus in the near future.
The official blog states, this will help you:
What makes these new reports stand out is the sheer number of networks being followed to peace together detailed stats for visitor flow (400 in this case). Contrary to recent actions, these Social Reports don’t seem to be bias towards Google properties with data coming from Google +, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Digg, Quora and the like. Here is an overview of the reports you can expect to see:
Overview Report: see social performance at a glance and its impact on conversions
Note: Last Interaction Social Conversion are referrals that lead to conversions immediately. Assisted Social Conversion are referrals that aren’t immediate but the visitor returns which leads to a conversion.
Conversions Report: which goals are being impacted by social media
Here you can measure the value of each social media channel by comparing conversion rates of each channel.
Social Sources - find out how visitors from different sources behave
This will show you engagement and conversion metrics for each social site so you can see how people are interacting with your content and whether this is leading to your goal for each site.
Social Plugins: find the content that’s good enough to share
This helps you understand which content is actually driving the most engagement and which social buttons are used to share your content.
Activity Stream: what’s happening outside of your website
If content was publicly shared, you will be able to see the URLs that were shared, how and where they shared (via a “reshare” on Google + for example), and what is being said.
These new social reports will be available in the new few weeks under the standard reporting tab in your Google Analytics accounts. Google is currently experiencing a host of backlash from the online community but this will generate some much needed positive publicity. These social reports are a welcomed relief for marketers and small-to-medium business owners looking for a free analytics tool to accurately measure their social media efforts. One of the big roadblocks in the uptake of social media has been the lack of quantifiable results, so I foresee this encouraging traditional businesses to dedicate more resources into social media.
Copyright © 2012 - SocialMotus, an Apex Pacific company. All rights reserved.
