Google has announced that you can now track metrics for social media within a new “Social” section of Google Analytics set to roll out to all users over the next few weeks.
This is great news for businesses that may still be a little shy on social media channels because you aren’t really sure what to track. After all, there’s no column for “warm fuzzies” on your marketing tracking sheet.
Google Analytics will now be connecting the data from social with your other key performance indicators to help determine the value your business is getting from your article shares, product and service promotion posts, and more.
While this tracks only public information for Facebook, and Twitter, and referrer data from these sites (which is still a heap of data), a number of other social sites are participating to share all metrics. There are several sites involved, and it is definitely tracking more than just Google+. Will Facebook and Twitter eventually pony up their data? Time will tell, but this is still a great snapshot of information that you can connect to your business goals.
According to Google, this new section of Google Analytics will help you:
- Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
- Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs
Are you a social media hold-out? Do you have profiles just because iMarket Solutions initiated your social media campaign?
Will the availability of this data encourage you to use social media more for your business? Let us know in the comments!
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