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You probably already use Analytics and are familiar with its outlay, and the pro’s for using such a tool. But did you know the Social benefits you can get from it too? With Social Media being an increasingly important marketing channel, measuring your results is something your business can simply not do without. 

Social media analytics

There are four key areas that define your social impact online, and are important to consider when developing a social campaign for your business. Using the Social Reports allows you collectively analyse the information and piece together the complete picture of how Social Media is impacting your business.

Sources.

Knowing where the traffic of your site has come from is half the battle. ‘Sources’ allows you to see which social networks referred the highest quality traffic, whether it was from a tweet at peak time, or a +1 to the right circles. By increasing your knowledge in these areas can increase targeted marketing at the source.

This report will show what network and URL was shared, how they were shared, and the conversations that took place there on in (your ‘Activity Stream’).

Conversions.

It is great to have a high hit rate on site, however it is worthless without any sort of monetary conversion.

The conversions reports allows you to quantify the actual ‘value’ of Social Media, showing the total number of conversions and the monetary value of each. This report can then also then be broken down into two further more in depth sections:

Assisted Conversions are defined as someone leaving your site without converting, then returning later to convert during a subsequent visit. Assisted Conversions shows the number (in total and monetary value) each Social Network was attributed to.

Last Interaction Conversions are when someone visits your website and converts, and measures their ‘last click’, the last place that the person has clicked from on their web-journey to reach you. The higher the numbers, the more important the role of the social network in driving traffic and sales.

By combined the results of both provides a ratio that surmises the social network(s) overall role in your marketing strategy and where each network’s strengths lie.

Pages.

Social Media is all about sharing and discussing content, in whatever form it may be. It is important to know what pages and content that is being shared, where, and how.

Via the page function, you are able to see how specific URLS/Pages are shared (via a tweet, +1, share action), which network it was shared on, and the conversation that took place for the resulting action.

Social Plugins

We covered these in Laymen’s Terms with our recent posts on Open Graph and Registration Plugins, but any sort of social plugin is a must for any website. By adding social plug ins (‘like’ and ‘tweet’ buttons) you allow your users to share directly to their social networks on site.

Of course, it is not only important to have the facilities to enable such sharing, but it is important to know what content is being shared where and why. Use this information to create more ‘popular’ style of content that resonates with your visitors.

It is also useful for adapting which plugins you use on site. There are many available which cover pretty much every social network ever invented. It can begin to look a little messy, and with the plug in data, may prove that some are not necessary at all, and give you the chance to tidy up the aesthetics of your page entirely.

Once you have established and input clear goals and things you want to achieve online socially (which hopefully is something already in place) the information provided will take your social strategy leaps and bounds ahead of your competition and on the road to social success.

[image via ponder.co.za]

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