If you’re using social media to get the word out about your business or brand, using Google Analytics for social media lets you track traffic and more to see if your efforts are working.
Using Google Analytics can be complicated though. Which reports are the best for telling you how your social media campaigns are doing? How can you easily access those reports?
In this post, we’ll go over what Google Analytics can tell you about your social media traffic and how to find the reports you need to analyze that traffic. If you’re a WordPress user, we’ll also show you a really easy way to track organic social traffic right from your dashboard.
Before we dive in, let’s find out exactly was social media tracking in Google Analytics can do.
Can Google Analytics Track Social Media?
Yes! Google Analytics can track social media, and it’s an awesome way to check your social media referral stats. There are a bunch of important metrics that Google Analytics can tell you about your social media traffic, including:
- If your social media traffic is converting
- How long social media traffic is spending on your site
- What percentage of your site’s overall traffic is from social media
- How many pages social media traffic is viewing on average before leaving
- How much traffic each social platform is sending
- What your top landing pages from social media are
With all of that data, you can make decisions about what’s working on social media, and what could be improved. Ready to take a look at your social media traffic in Google Analytics? Let’s dive in.
How to Use Google Analytics for Social Media
View Social Media Reports in Google Analytics
Google Analytics doesn’t have specific social media reports. Instead, you’ll just find your social traffic within your other reports.
Let’s start with the Acquisition Overview. Go to Acquisition » Traffic acquisition. In this report, you’ll be able to find each of your social networks separately in the table, like YouTube here:
You can use the search bar to search for each social network. Or, scroll until you find them to see their numbers.
To see your social traffic in general against your other channels, click the Session source/medium dropdown under the Search bar. Choose Session default channel grouping to change the way your channels are organized.
You’ll now see your social traffic lumped into Organic Social, Organic Video, Paid Social, and Paid Video, depending on what kinds of campaigns you’re running.
This report is great for seeing how your organic social media traffic compares to your other traffic sources.
How to Track Social Media in WordPress
If you’re using WordPress, there’s a way that you can track your social media traffic stats right in your WordPress dashboard.
How? By using ExactMetrics to set up Google Analytics for social media!
ExactMetrics is the best premium WordPress analytics plugin. With ExactMetrics, there’s a whole list of things you can set up and monitor in Google Analytics and your WordPress dashboard, including social media tracking.
Our most popular features include:
- Easy enhanced ecommerce setup and tracking through WooCommerce
- One click Google Ads, Microsoft (Bing) Ads, and Meta (Facebook) Ads conversion tracking
- Top outbound and top affiliate link clicks
- GDPR / CCPA and other compliance
- Scroll tracking
- Form tracking
- Popular posts or products widget
With ExactMetrics, all your most important metrics are right there in your WordPress dashboard.
To get started using ExactMetrics to track social media in Google Analytics, check out our tutorial on How to Add Google Analytics to WordPress (Step-by-Step Guide).
Monitor Social Media Traffic with Referral Reports
When you open your ExactMetrics dashboard reports, you’ll find your Top 10 Referrals report right there in the Overview report. Here’s what that report would look like when Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram (with Linktree) are your top referral sources:
With this report, you can see at-a-glance if your social media posts are sending the amount of traffic to your website that you’re hoping for.
Track Overall Social Media Traffic
Want to see how your social media traffic is performing compared to other traffic channels? With ExactMetrics, you don’t even need to leave WordPress. Just click Traffic » Overview. You can quickly see the channels bringing traffic to your site, including organic social and organic video.
This is an awesome way to easily see if your social media visitors are converting as well as other sources. Check if social media is bringing in the same amount of engaged sessions, how many pages users are visiting on average, whether social media traffic is contributing to revenue, and more.
Create Custom URLs for Social Media Monitoring
Another way you can track social media traffic is by creating custom URLs with UTM codes for your campaigns. Using the ExactMetrics URL Builder, you can add bits of code called UTM parameters to track the links you share on social media more in-depth.
To create a unique link, go to ExactMetrics and then click Tools. Here you’ll see the URL Builder. Next, enter the parameters for your URL for the tool to spit out the URL you can share.
The campaigns you create with this tool will then show up in Google Analytics reports.
That’s all!
We hope this guide helped you to learn how to use Google Analytics for social media tracking in WordPress as well as your Analytics account.
Get started with ExactMetrics now!
If you’re using social media to grow your business, we think you’ll like 30 Epic Marketing Hacks for Explosive Traffic Growth.
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