How Social Analytic Reports Can Help You
Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or Tumblr, social media has become ever present in our society. In a report done by Experian, 91% of adults use social media regularly. With sites such as Facebook totaling 7 billion visits in the month of March alone, it’s clear that social media is here to stay. Social media is becoming more important in marketing channels, leading to an increased need to understand the impact that different social media mediums have on your website.
Social Analytics Reports
Social analytics reports tell you the quantitative effect that social media has on your website, and allows you to use those numbers to your advantage. They give you the ability to pick which social media sites you want to advertise on, based off of the conversion value of each social site. Social analytics reports come in 5 sections: sources, pages, conversions, social plug-ins, and social visitors flow.
Sources
The sources report measures quantitative data such as page views, average visit duration, and pages per visit from each social site. Knowing these numbers will help you see which social site referred the highest quality traffic. You can use this information to your advantage by increasing your investment for social sites that referred the highest quality traffic, which would improve your overall sales. The sources report also allows you to see which URLs were shared, how they were shared, and what conversations took place about it.
Pages
The pages report is similar to the sources report in that it tells you data such as page views, average visit duration, and pages per visit from each social site. It differs from the sources report in that it tells you this data for each separate URL on your page. You can use the report to help you decide which content is most popular, and featuring that content more.
Conversions
You may be thinking that, while it is nice to know how many people visit your page from different social sites, how do these numbers relate to your sales? Social analytics reports measure the conversions you get from social sites. Conversions are measured through either goal conversions, which is when a user signs up for your newsletter, or transactions. These measurements are important when determining the role that each different social site plays. Knowing the conversion numbers from social sites can be useful for determining which sites are better at increasing conversions for you, and which sites you may need to invest more effort in to.
Social Plug-ins
Social analytics reports also measure the effectiveness of social plug-ins, Google “+1” and Facebook “Like” buttons, on your website. For example, if you post special deals on your website, you can find out which ones are shared the most on different social sites. You can use this information to post more of the content that is popular with users. Also, for the buttons that are rarely used, you can remove them to keep your site less cluttered and more user-friendly.
Social Visitors Flow
You can also track the social visitors flow, which shows the initial paths that visitors from social sites took through your site. This can show you if visitors from social sites entered your page through special promoted pages, and whether they continued on your site or exited. This is useful in determining which social site gives you the highest quality traffic.
Social media is here to stay, and social analytics reports can help you improve the results of your advertising. Whoever it is that’s in your target audience, it’s very likely that they use social media regularly. Take advantage of the resources at your disposal and use them to put yourself ahead of the competition.
