Visibility

Essential to almost all online marketing strategies, social media can amplify your exposure and help you connect with customers in new ways. But how do you determine what kind of posts perform best? What tweets lead to the most conversions? And can you attribute revenue to any of your Facebook activities?

If you (or your boss) are suspicious of what, for example, a Twitter based campaign can do for your business, or if you don’t know which way to turn next with your various social media accounts, read on to learn how you can massage hard data out of a sometimes fuzzy medium.

Important note: We wrote this post to give you a framework for how such tracking can be done and not to convince you to use a particular system. Various paid and free analytics tools are readily available. (Heck, you may only need something as simple as the website Bit.ly.) We choose Google Analytics as an example because it is free and easy for anyone to test the waters with, so to speak. Whatever you choose to go with, we hope these particular solutions offered below function as resources on which to build your own strategy.

Tracking Social Media Campaign Success and Conversion Rates

The following section will show you how to track the success of particular tweets or other types of posts (such as on your Facebook Fan Page) by adding a code to the end of the URL you’re promoting. Imagine you’re launching a new product and want to see what type of posts (conversational or more formal) or time of day (morning versus afternoon) performs best.

Step 1: Create Individualized Codes for Your Posts

For each tweet, post, or campaign you want to track, you’ll need to create an individualized code to attach to the end of your chosen landing page. For example, you could place /?id=TW01 at the end of your landing page, www.SAMPLE.com, to make www.SAMPLE.com/?id=TW01. Browsers won’t read anything after the question mark (?), which means a person clicking the URL will land on the original page. Only your web analytics system will note the additional characters, as we explain below.

Note: Be sure to keep close track of what the codes you create correspond to. If you do not, you will be unable to determine which campaigns worked and which didn’t.

Example of Code Spreadsheet

Step 2: Create Custom Segment

Once logged in to Google Analytics, go to the Dashboard of the website-in-question’s profile.

On the left-hand rail under My Customizations, click Advanced Segments. In the right-hand corner of this new page, click Create new custom segment.

Under Dimensions, select Content. Drag and drop Landing Page from the list into the adjacent white box. This immediately places a drop-down menu in the box called Condition – choose Contains.  The Value – the option next to Contains – is where you type in the first tracking code, for instance, /?id=TW01.

At the bottom of this section you’ll be asked to Name segment. Give it a moniker that represents the Value, for instance, Tweet Number 1.  Create Segment and begin again to create another custom segment (however many you need!).

Step 3: Seeing Your Posts Perform in Graphical Form

After a segment is created and the associated link has gone out to the public, you can track its performance by returning to the website’s profile Dashboard page.

Once again, click on Advanced Segments under My Customizations in the right rail. You’ll see the segment(s) you’ve created. This will show you visits per date, total number of visitors, referring sites and other useful information.

Step 4 (Optional): Track Conversions

If you only need to know how much traffic a single tweet, for instance, drives, you can skip this step. If you want to see how a single post converts a registration, sign up, or sale, read on.

Back on the website Dashboard, click on Goals in the right rail to Set up goals and funnels. Once on this page you can Add goal. The goal type should be URL Destination, and your Goal URL should be your Thank You or confirmation page. Under Goal Funnel, add the tracking code. Doing this allows Google Analytics to track the success of that link through to the end of the conversion. Further explanation of this process can be found in the Common Questions section of Google Analytics.

Tracking Social Media Revenue (Optional)

One of the useful tools Google Analytics provides is the ability for users to track revenue. Once setup we can track total revenue generated by, say, your company’s tweets, how many visits it took to make a purchase, average order value, or which products were most popular.

I’d preface by saying you may need access to your system’s server-side code in order to populate the transaction variables in the _addTrans and _addItem portions of the code. (You may need the help of your company’s marketing analyst to complete the following steps as it involves some coding.)

Step 1: Enable Ecommerce Tracking

The first step is to go into your Google Analytics profile under Edit.

Once inside your Profile Settings, click Edit under Main Website Profile Information.

Select Yes, an E-commerce Site. This will enable ecommerce tracking for your Google Analytics profile.

Step 2: Insert Ecommerce Tracking Script

An ecommerce tracking code example can be found here: http://bit.ly/hmW0FA

Once we’ve enabled ecommerce tracking in our Google Analytics profile we need to insert Google Analytic’s ecommerce tracking script into our Thank You/confirmation page. It’s important that you are using the latest Google Analytics ga.js. It doesn’t matter where you place the code on the website as long as the code is placed below  your Google Analytics script.

You’ll want to check to make sure your variables do not include dollar signs or commas. If the value of an item is $0 do not use a 0 in the total field. Use “”.

Once your ecommerce tracking is setup you will be able to use your Advanced Segments in the Google Analytics Ecommerce Tab on the right pane of the Dashboard to filter your ecommerce data by individual tweets or overall Social Media effectiveness.

With the preceding systems in place, you should have all the data you need to confidently determine your social media strategy and to defend your choices with hard data. Be ready to explore different analytics tools and social media campaigns as your needs change. Good luck!