Google Launches New Tools to Measure Social Media
To determine the effects of social media on specific goals, turn to the conversions report. With this report you can measure the value of a specific social network in terms of how many conversions it has generated and the monetary value of these conversions. If you take the time to define your goals and goal values in analytics, you can also discover how content that your business shared is affecting conversions. You can do this simply by looking to see if Goal Completions via Social Referral on the time graph improved after you shared the relevant content.
How do the behaviors of people across social networks differ? The social sources report can answer this question for you. This report reveals how the people who use each social network differ from one another in the ways that they view your content and communicate with your business. With the social sources report, you can see which content is the most successful at engaging customers on each social network as well as conversion rates for each network. And why stop with just these social media platforms? You can even learn how many people go on to visit your site from each social network and what they do once theyre there with the Social Visitor Flow.
A major component to any successful social media campaign is to regularly share high quality information to have continued interactions with customers. The social plugins report will help you discover what type of information, and the format in which it is presented, is most effective with your customers. You can determine this by seeing the content your business has shared previously that proved to be the most valuable based on user engagement and sharing. With this data in mind, you can be sure to share content that your customers find valuable and that has the best proven results. Additionally, the social plugins report will give you insight into how people share your business information, such as with a retweet or a +1.
The best view of interactions with your business social content across the web, comes from the activities stream. The stream provides you with data from all of the social networks that are Googles Social Data Hub Partners, including sites like Meetup and Badoo. Specifically, this report will show your business URLs that are being shared, the sharing tools and social networks through which they are being shared, and how people are responding to the information shared with them.
As these new social reports become available in the coming weeks, they will provide your business with a wealth of information about the effectiveness of your social media efforts. With the social reports youll be able to determine the impact social networks are having on your business, how they are leading to conversions, and what people are saying about your work. This information will be key in continuing to develop a social media plan that is based on hard data and proven success.
Sharon Shapiro is writing for Cloud Sherpas. Cloud Sherpas is a leading cloud service provider and was named the Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year. As one of the first Google Enterprise partners, Cloud Sherpas has migrated over one million users across a variety of industries from legacy, on-premise messaging systems to Google Apps, helping organizations adopt cloud computing to innovate and dramatically reduce their IT expenses. A Google Apps Reseller in Atlanta, GA, Cloud Sherpas has regional offices in locations including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Austin and Sydney, and has more Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialists than any other partner in the world.
