We’ve said it before and we’ll say it another million times—every website owner should be checking their analytics consistently. The time of letting your website work as a business card is long gone, and the time to learn more about how your site is performing is now.
Google Analytics makes it much easier to see how your site is performing, and they’re constantly adding new features. A feature that was added in just the last few months is this: better social media tracking. Google Analytics has always tracked traffic from social media, but not as a separate entity—this feature will (or should) transform the way you handle your social media accounts.
How to Use Google Analytics’ Social Media
If you log into your Google Analytics account, you’ll find the social media feature under “Traffic Sources” on the left hand side of the screen. The last option is “Social.” Our favorite social media tool on there (and the one we’re examining here) is “Social Visitors Flow.”
The social flow is a chart that shows you where each of your visitors arriving from social media is going. The major social networks bringing traffic to your site are all listed there, and you’ll see right away which ones are working for your business. At Smart Solutions, we came to the startling realization that although we were putting the majority of our social media time into Facebook, the best visitor performers actually came from Linkedin—one of the sites we hadn’t put much effort into.
[picture from analytics.blogspot.com]
Examining this chart for your business website will help you to segment and distribute your social media time into the social media sites that are actually bringing valuable visitors to your business website.
If you don’t have Google Analytics in place for your website just yet, go get it set up! It takes only a few minutes to install the code on your website, and the benefit you get is well worth the effort.