Google Announces New Social Media Analytic Tools

Figure courtesy of Google

Finally, social media managers have a new set of no cost tools to help take some of the mystery out of analyzing the value of social media activities. Response to Google's March 20 announcement about its new analytics package for social media has been generally favorable.

You haven't heard about this yet? Well, you need to get onboard, as Google Analytic's new "Social Reports" option provides a powerful (and free!) means for measuring the impacts and effectiveness of your social media programs.

According to the Google announcement, "The new reports bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about - allowing you to better measure the full value of the social channel for your business." Specifically, Social Reports will help social media managers:

1. place a value on traffic from social media sites by measuring how they lead to direct engagements with key audience members;
2. develop a more refined understanding of social activities on and off of social media sites, which help optimize engagement and key performance indicators; and
3. make more efficient and better qualified decisions about SM programs based on credible data.

For a better understanding of how the Social Reports program works, check out "About Social Analytics" on the Google Analytics Help page. According to Google, the following four elements define social impact: sources, conversions, pages, and social plugins. Google defines these elements as follows (source):

Sources: As your content is shared and people come to your site, it's important to understand how visitors from different social sources engage with your site.

Conversions: Shared content URLs become the entry points into your site, driving traffic from social sources. Measuring the conversion and monetary value of this traffic will help you understand the impact of Social on your business.

Pages: People increasingly engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks. It’s important to know which pages and content are being shared, where they're being shared, and how.

Social Plugins: Adding Social Plugin buttons to your site (for example, Google "+1" buttons) allows your users share content to social networks directly from your site. Your social plugin data shows you which content is being shared, and on which networks.

By integrating analysis of all these elements (and visitor flow through sites), social media managers can now obtain a more complete and accurate understanding of how social media affects performance, justify the cost of social media activities, and demonstrate social media's contribution to an organization's bottom line.

To get started with setting up and evaluating your Social Reports, read the tutorials provided by Google at its "About Social Analytics" page.