Social Media Analytics can be extremely useful for monitoring the effectiveness of your social media marketing. There are two main ways to track social media analytics: manually and automatically. In other words, you can either log into each platform’s analytics to get reports on your page views and post engagements, or you can use a plugin that automatically tracks all of this information for you.
Social Media Analytics Website Traffic
Analytics for website traffic is a very important part of running any business or website. There are many different types of analytics that you can use to track your website’s performance. Each type of analytics has its own benefits and drawbacks, so it is important to understand what they are before you decide which one(s) will work best for your needs.
Google Analytics is one of the most popular tools used by websites today because it’s free and easy to use.
The number one reason for the popularity of social media is the ability to communicate with people all over the world. But what if you want to know more about your audience?
If you’re looking to better understand how your audience interacts with your content, website analytics are useful. Google Analytics tracks data on everything from page views and visitor demographics, to engagement and conversion rates.
Google Analytics provides insight into who visits your site and how often, as well as what they’re interested in. It also allows you to see how long visitors spend on each page, which helps you understand how content is being received. This data can be used to determine whether or not changes need to be made or if current practices are effective.
it’s always nice to see your traffic grow, and you can track it with the Social Media Analytics website traffic statistic. This is a helpful tool for seeing how many people have visited your website and what they did while they were there.
The first thing that you need to do is find out if your website is being tracked by Google Analytics.
Once you have signed up for Google Analytics, you can start tracking your social media analytics website traffic statistics by logging into Google Analytics and clicking “Admin” at the top of the page.
Next, click “Tracking Info” and then “Tracking Code” to add your tracking code to your site. You will need to copy this code from your browser window into the text box on Google Analytics’ site, then click “Save & Close” at the bottom of the page.
Now that everything is set up, go back into Google Analytics’ main dashboard and select “Real Time -> Overview” from the left-hand menu under Dashboards & Reporting.
How to Use Google Analytics to Track Social Media
Google Analytics offers an easy and free way to track and analyze visitors on your website. You could have thousands or even millions of visitors every month, but those visitors are practically meaningless if you don’t know anything about them. With its robust web analytics and reporting tools, Google Analytics can help you make the most out of visitors and potentially turn them into customers.
In addition to tracking the number of visitors, Google Analytics provides key insights into how your website is performing and what you can do to meet your goals. You can track everything from how much traffic your website is getting to where that traffic is coming from and how visitors are behaving. You can even monitor social media activities, track mobile app traffic, identify trends and integrate other data sources to help you make well-informed business decisions.
Here’s how to use Google Analytics for your website.
Google Analytics Basics
If you want to skip the details and just get started, here’s a rundown of how to set up Google Analytics on your website:
• Sign in to Google Analytics with your Google account
• Click the Admin button on the bottom left sidebar of your dashboard
• Select an account or create an account
• Click on the dropdown menu to create a property
• Click on Website and add your site’s name and URL
• Choose your industry
• Choose your time zone
• Click on Get Tracking ID
• Install Tracking ID on your website
Here are also a few terms you should know:
Account — where each property lives in your dashboard. You can set up multiple properties in one account or have multiple accounts for different properties
Property — the website or mobile app you want to track
Tracking ID — a unique code added to your site that allows Google Analytics to track it
Conversion — visits that turn into customers or potential customers
Channel/Traffic source — shows where your traffic came from, such as referrals or links from other sites, search engines, social media and emails
Session duration — how long visitors spend on your site
Bounce rate — percentage of visitors that view only a single page and then leave
Event — specific visitor behavior, such as when a visitor clicks on an ad, watches or stops a video, downloads a file and more
Landing page — the first page a visitor sees when visiting your website
Organic search — visitors who visit your site from a link on a search results page
Segment — a way to filter data, such as by category and types of visitors
And the types of reports you shouldn’t miss:
Acquisition — shows you where traffic comes from, such as search engines, social media, email marketing campaigns and links from other websites. You’ll find this under the Acquisition tab.
Keywords — tells you what search words visitors used to find your website on a search engine. You’ll find this report in the Behavior tab, under Site Search.
Conversions — tracks how many visitors are converting into newsletter subscribers, shoppers and actual customers. Click on the Conversions tab and choose a type or category of conversion to view a report.
Lifetime value — currently in beta, Lifetime Value reports track visitors throughout their lifetime, from their first visit to conversions, return visits, future purchases and beyond. This can help you figure out what turned these visitors into customers and what made them keep coming back so you can implement changes. Lifetime value is located under the Audience tab.
Landing page — shows you which pages are the most frequent landing pages so you can track down where those visitors are coming from and what’s working on those top pages that’s attracting customers. You’ll find this across different reports under the landing page column.
Active users — monitors how many visitors are actually active on your site within a specific time period, such as the past week, 14 days or month. This will show you what pages the most active users are visiting so you can figure out what’s keeping their attention and apply it to the rest of your website. You can find the active users report in the Audience tab under Active Users.
Now that you have the basics down, here’s more on using Google Analytics as a small business.
Sign up for a Google Analytics account
To use Google Analytics, you will need a Google account. Go to google.com/analytics. Click on Sign in or Create an Account on the upper left corner. If you’re already signed in, click on Access Google Analytics. Fill in the required information – account name, website name, URL, industry, time zone and data-sharing settings.
Click on Get Tracking ID to finish setting up your account.
Set up Google Analytics on your website
A <script> tracking code is required to track your website. You’ll be taken directly to the Tracking Code section after setting up your account. The tracking code must be on every page you wish to track. There are a few ways to do this:
• Copy and paste the code directly into your website template.
• Create a “analyticstracking.php” file with the code and add <?php include_once(“analyticstracking.php”) ?> after your template’s <body> tag.
• Check your web host, website builder or blog platform for Google Analytics integration. For instance, there are several plug-ins on WordPress that will automatically add the tracking code to every page. Some website builders have a specific page or field where you simply enter your tracking ID. Others — such as Blogger and Squarespace — require only your Google Analytics web property ID or account number, a string of numbers prefixed with the letters UA that identify your website.
Start tracking
One of the best things about Google Analytics is that it offers a range of metrics that users can customize to fit their needs. All of Google Analytics’ features can be accessed and configured from the left sidebar.
Here are three features that matter most to small businesses.
Traffic sources
Find out where your visitors and customers are coming from. Just click on the Acquisitions tab on the left sidebar and you’ll be able to view all traffic sources, such as channels, referrals and organic searches.
You’ll also be able to find which search terms visitors are using that led them to your website. Google Analytics automatically scans more than 20 major search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and, of course, all of Google’s properties. It also includes searches from international search engines like Baidu as well as searches from major websites like CNN.
Custom reports
You can configure metrics for your own categories that are not included in the default settings using custom reports. For instance, if you own an online business, you can use this section to monitor traffic based on product SKUs, size, and color. Additionally, you can incorporate outside data sources, like your customer relationship management (CRM) program. Create your metrics by selecting the Customization tab.
Social settings
It’s not enough to simply run a social media marketing campaign. It’s imperative that you track your results, too. Google Analytics can help by integrating social media into your tracking metrics. Although you can’t add your Google Analytics tracking code to your social media accounts, what you can do is add them under Social Settings. For instance, if you own a YouTube channel, you can track activities by adding your account using your YouTube URL.
To track social media campaigns, click on Acquisition on the left sidebar. Here you can add campaigns, track landing pages, monitor conversions and more.
Add users
Do you want other team members to have access to your Google Analytics account? Your only requirement is their email addresses. In the left sidebar, select an account, then click on User Management under the Admin menu. You can add new users from here and modify permissions. For instance, you can offer users admin-level access so they can change things like your settings or limit their access to viewing and analyzing traffic. Additionally, adding users makes it simple to interact and deliver reports.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a website traffic analysis application that provides real-time statistics and analysis of user interaction with the website. Google analytics enables website owners to analyze their visitors, with the objective of interpreting and optimizing website’s performance. Google analytics can track all forms of digital media and referring upstream web destinations, banner and contextual advertisements, e-mail and integrates with other Google products.
How Google Analytics works
Google Analytics is a platform that collects data from your websites and apps to create reports that provide insights into your business.
Measuring a website
To measure a website, you first have to create a Google Analytics account. Then you need to add a small piece of JavaScript measurement code to each page on your site. Every time a user visits a webpage, the tracking code will collect anonymous information about how that user interacted with the page.
For the Google Store, the measurement code could show how many users visited a page that sells drinkware versus a page that sells houseware. Or it could tell us how many users bought an item like an Android doll by tracking whether they made it to the purchase-confirmation page.
The measurement code will also collect information from the browser like the language setting, the type of browser (such as Chrome or Safari), and the device and operating system on which the browser is running. It can even collect the “traffic source,” which is what brought users to the site in the first place. This might be a search engine, an advertisement they clicked on, or an email marketing campaign.
Processing and reporting
When the measurement code collects data, it packages that information up and sends it to Google Analytics to be processed into reports. When Analytics processes data, it aggregates and organizes the data based on particular criteria like whether a user’s device is mobile or desktop, or which browser they’re using.
But there are also configuration settings that allow you to customize how that data is processed. For example, you might want to apply a filter to make sure your data doesn’t include any internal company traffic or developer traffic.
Who is Google Analytics useful for?
Google Analytics is most helpful to businesses with an online presence that want to track their marketing campaigns because it is used to track search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), and other marketing initiatives.
You may learn vital details about your audience, website visitor behavior, traffic trends, and more with the help of Google Analytics. Additionally, the data sampling function of Google Analytics makes it quick to access and evaluate data.
Whether you choose the free or paid version, you can learn a lot about how your visitors use your website. To begin, all you need to do is set up Google Analytics.
What are the benefits of Google Analytics?
Let’s go beyond what Google Analytics is and talk about why it matters.
In order to understand why Google Analytics is so beneficial, it’s important to first have a baseline understanding of what it helps to track.
Earlier, we mentioned that the platform helps website owners track the success of their SEO, PPC and other internet marketing campaigns. But what are SEO and PPC?
The term SEO refers to a variety of marketing strategies used to enhance your website. These changes raise the ranking of your website in search engine results pages, which increases visitors.
Targeting significant keywords that your audience frequently searches for, producing educational content to target those keywords, building a user-friendly website, and other activities are the main goals of SEO campaigns.
PPC is a sort of paid advertising that Google Analytics can also track.
Business owners choose and bid on keywords to obtain the best, paid advertising spaces in a search engine’s sponsored links. It operates on a bidding system. PPC’s greatest benefit is that advertisers only pay when customers click their advertisements.
With all that said, you can see how it may be difficult to understand the results driven from these strategies without some sort of tracking platform.
That’s the exact reason Google Analytics is so beneficial.
Benefits of Google Analytics
1. Access to real-time data
The “real-time” tab is one of the first tabs in Google Analytics. You may view current information about your website on this tab.
It comprises a digital read of the number of people visiting your website at any given moment, the proportion of those users seeing it on a desktop computer, and the proportion using a mobile device.
The number of website pageviews per minute and per second, the top referring websites (websites that mention your website), the top active pages, and the top geographical places where your website is seen are also all visible.
This real-time data can be divided into locations, traffic sources, content, and other categories.
You can see what proportion of website users are from different countries on the locations tab.
You can see where your traffic is coming from in the traffic sources page, which is quite helpful in figuring out how your target audience uses the internet. The platform may provide you with information on the proportion of website visitors who come from search engines, also known as organic traffic, referral traffic, paid ad traffic, and direct traffic.
The real-time tab also separates your data into conversions, which shows what kinds of goals are currently being achieved, and content, which provides real-time information for what content is being viewed.
The objectives that website owners set for themselves might range from a new lead or job submission to a newsletter registration.
Real-time numbers provide basic information about site traffic, and they help you understand user behavior. Things like:
- Time of day that users are typically on your website
- Fluctuation of users over time
- Where to focus your energy — is your traffic mostly paid, referral, or organic?
- How often users sign up for a newsletter, download a guide, make a conversion, or complete any other goal that you set.
2. Insights into your audience
It’s really helpful to know as much as you can about your audience in order to better understand how to service and target them.
Google Analytics makes this data available, including the number of visitors to your website, the number of sessions each user completes, the number of pages viewed during a session, and the average session length.
Charts showing the proportion of new vs. returning visitors to your site and how traffic changes over time are also available under the audience tab.
Google Analytics also offers audience demographics to provide you a deeper understanding of your website visitors. It provides details such as the proportion of visitors who speak a particular language, the majority of your visitors’ countries of origin, the browsers they use, and even the mobile operating systems.
These broad, surface-level demographics are undoubtedly helpful, but Google Analytics also aids in your understanding of your audience by offering data on the lifetime value of your users, cohort analysis, and other things.
You can delve into your audience’s interests, behavior on your website (which includes things like engagement), what kind of mobile device they use, and more using the audience tab.
Audience analytics is more important than what meets the eye!
- It helps you decide things like language to use on your site, jargon, tone, and more.
- It helps you understand what time of day users are most active on your site.
- It helps you understand just how important mobile-friendliness is for your website.
- It helps you understand their interests and what to include more content on.
- And so much more.
3. Enhanced ad management
PPC advertisements, as we’ve already discussed, are a fantastic method to increase traffic to your website, but without an analytics tool, it can be challenging to monitor the results.
You can track and manage your Google Ads account in one location with Google Analytics. The amount of clicks on each ad, the cost of each campaign, the cost per click, and other information will all be available to you.
Monitoring your PPC advertising enables you to identify what is effective and ultimately saves you money.
- Understand the money being spent and if it’s benefiting your campaign
- Understand what keywords are beneficial
- Understand how often users are clicking, and what ads are working the best
- Understand how users interact with landing pages
4. Improved understanding of interactions and user behavior
You may find information on all things site content in the behavior tab of your Analytics platform.
You may view a list of all the pages on your website, the most popular ones, and the volume of traffic they receive over time.
Additionally, you may enter a specific URL from your website to view statistics for that page.
Sessions, new users, bounce rate, average session duration, and page conversion rate are some of the details shown in the behaviors tab.
You may view your site speed, metrics for the last page a person visited before leaving the site, and more from this tab.
Understanding how users interact with your site content helps you save time and effort and direct it to the correct areas of your site.
- Helps determine which content is the most popular and the most beneficial
- Helps determine what elements keep users on a page
- Shows what pages are driving conversions
- Allows you to compare a page during two different time periods to track how content changes affected your pages
Conclusion
Social Media Analytics can be used to improve your business in many ways. By using social media analytics to analyze website traffic, visits, and content, you can identify any potential problems and correct them. Additionally, by using social media analytics to analyse website layout and strategy, you can ensure that your website is user-friendly and efficient. In conclusion, by using social media analytics to improve your website overall, you can achieve greater success for your business.