Instructed by Matt Aster.

1. Measuring Social Media Impact
with Google Analytics
Matt Aster
Manager, Inbound Marketing
Precision Dialogue

2. Data Attribution
If you’re main KPI for social is revenue in
Google Analytics, you’re going to have a bad
time.

3. Instead, look at overall contribution

4. Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
•
Best practices for social data in Google Analytics
What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?
Standard reports that include social data
Attribution modeling
Social media impact to website engagement
Online/Offline Reconciliation

5. About Me
 10+ years experience in online marketing
 Data background from Goodyear & Progressive
 Manager, Inbound Marketing at Precision Dialogue,
a Forrester ranked Customer Engagement Agency
@MattAster
I create strategies and optimize campaigns by
using both new and existing digital techniques.

6. Today You Will Learn
• How to accurately measure social media traffic
to your website.
• Where to look to determine possible attribution
paths.
• A technique for syncing your online data in
Google Analytics with your offline CRM (which
will ultimately allow 1:1 social mapping)

7. Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
Best practices for social data in Google Analytics
What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?
Standard reports that include social data
Attribution modeling
Online/Offline Reconciliation

8. Track your URLs
• Utilize UTM tracking
– http://bit.ly/GABuilder
– Ensure that “social” is in the medium
• Ideally build your own shortener/redirect
– Edit links after launch
– Insert forgotten parameters

9. Best Practices (continued)
• Keep your data clean
– Remove dev/test
– Exclude your IP(s)
• Establish goals (think microconversions)
• Withhold judgment!

10. Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
Best practices for social data in Google Analytics
What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?
Standard reports that include social data
Attribution modeling
Online/Offline Reconciliation

11. _trackSocial
_trackSocial(network, socialAction, opt_target, opt_pagePath)
Useful for seeing total actions taken, that’s about it right now.
http://bit.ly/SocialInteraction (link to documentation in GA help)

12. Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
Best practices for social data in Google Analytics
What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?
Standard reports that include social data
Attribution modeling
Online/Offline Reconciliation

13. Reports That Include Social Data

14. Create an Advanced Segment
• If you didn’t set up campaign tracking the way I suggested, you’ll
need this regular expression
facebook|twitter|myspace|linkedin|stumbleupon|digg|youtube|flickr|pinterest|etc|etc|etc
• If you did set it up the way I recommended

15. Use The Advanced Segment
INSIGHTS!

16. Alerting

17. Real Time Reporting

18. Move The Needle

19. Discover your Social Contribution
Go find out your social contribution to your
site.
Google Analytics > Conversions > Multi Channel > Top Paths
If you’re ecommerce look at Year over Year
difference in revenue.
Move The Needle

20. Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
Best practices for social data in Google Analytics
What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?
Standard reports that include social data
Attribution modeling
Online/Offline Reconciliation

22. Attribution is not easy
• Attribution modeling is not easy, but spend
some time understanding what’s
happening on your site

23. Conversion Segments in GA
• Build hypotheses and create segments

24. Agenda
•
•
•
•
•
Best practices for social data in Google Analytics
What is _trackSocial, and how do I use it?
Standard reports that include social data
Attribution modeling
Online/Offline Reconciliation

25. What and Why?
• Google Analytics can’t hold any PII
– Creative alternative is to insert a unique
identifier into GA as a proxy
• Match your records offline to the data in
GA using the unique identifier
– If you have offline conversions you’ll know
their traffic source
– Begin understanding lifetime value

26. Rough Schema
Google
cv #AB12
Your Website
Cookie: <deleted>
ID AB12
Cookie: <not present>
ID AB12
I’ll explain more in second half
CRM
ID #AB12

27. Key Takeaways
 Know your key performance indicators

Keep them realistic and actionable
 Be realistic with goals and expectations
 Data is your friend
 Be consistent



How you tag
How you report
Metrics

28. Thank You
www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org
Matt.Aster@precisiondialogue.com
@MattAster