social media analytics: driving traffic through data

DRIVING SOCIAL MEDIA TRAFFIC, ENGAGEMENTS AND CONVERSIONS THROUGH DATA

Ryan Stewart Hello@Webris.org @ryanwashere https://www.facebook.com/groups/digitalmarketinghelp

What I’m going to tell you works.

Social media is designed to waste your time.

The 5 W’s

I'm going to cover the 5 w's of social media analytics: 1.  Why do I use social media?

2. Where is my content performing the best? 3. What posts are driving the most value for my business? 4. Who is sharing my content? 5. When is the best time to post?

WHY DO I USE SOCIAL MEDIA?

That’s a serious question – WHY?

“Because everyone is – we should too”.

Social media isn't for everyone…

Let me give you an example…

•  Build social signals (i.e. ReTweets, +1s, Likes, Shares, etc) on my links. I’m an organic search marketer – social signals help drive rankings. I’ve seen a tremendous positive correlation between the social signals I’ve gotten and organic performance.

•  Drive quality traffic to my blog. I want people to come to the site, read a few pieces of content, bookmark it, share it, etc.

•  Drive form submissions on our site. We have a number of web forms on our site that we dump into the top of our sales funnel.

•  Build a large, active Twitter following. I do a lot of guest blogging and speaking engagements. Having a large Twitter following to help spread the word opens the door to bigger opportunities.

Everything I do on social media needs to be driving at one of these goals. If it doesn’t, I cut my losses and save my time.

Let me give you an example…

KPIs and targets greatly improve your data analysis.

For example: does Google+ drive form submissions for our site? •  Without KPIs and targets: Yes, it does. •  With KPIs and targets: Yes, it does, but Google+ only converts at .

001%. Therefore, it’s not a reliable source of leads for our website. Defining success metrics saves you more time by making analysis black and white.

Does this effort meet the target amount?

Yes? Scale up. No? Scratch it.

WHAT POSTS ARE THE MOST VALUABLE TO MY BUSINESS?

Laying the groundwork

1.  Goals and Events properly defined, set up and tracking

2.  All outbound URLs are being tagged

Talkin’ Dollars and Cents

You NEED Goals or custom events set up on your website to do this.

Tag everything!

Untagged links provide no insight.

How to tag URLs

Use Google’s URL Builder: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en •  Website URL (required) – Enter the URL of the link you plan to place

•  Campaign Source (required) – Social network name (Facebook, Twitter, Quora, etc)

•  Campaign Medium (required) – The marketing medium (Social Media)

•  Campaign Term (not required) – Leave this blank

•  Campaign Content (not required) – Leave this blank

•  Campaign Name (required) – This is the tag that differentiates your tracking. I strongly suggest you come up with a standard naming convention. Let’s say I’m posting a link to Facebook:

URLs still function perfectly

Tag URLs using standard naming

Report #1: Aggregate Conversions

Report: Acquisition > Social > Conversions

Insights: •  Good for high level analysis •  Total aggregate conversions by network

Report #2: Campaign conversion report

Insights: •  What posts are driving the most traffic, engagements and conversions •  What posts aren’t driving value •  Knowledge to tailor your content distribution better

Report: Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns

Report #3: Engagement conversions

Report: Acquisition > All Traffic > Source / Medium

Insights: •  Engagement metrics by post •  Allows you to judge if that post / social network is a valuable source of traffic

WHERE DOES MY CONTENT PERFORM THE BEST?

Report: Acquisition > Social > Landing Pages

Insights: •  Your top performing posts / content on social media •  Use this data to remove the guess work from content creation •  Replicate what performs well, remove what doesn’t

WHEN IS THE BEST TIME

TO POST?

Your audience is unique – collect your own data!

Insights: •  Who is talking about you and where •  Gives you the opportunity to jump into the conversation, engage and expand

your reach

Multiple data inputs

Front end data: •  Data from the social network’s analytics platform •  Impressions, link clicks (if available), engagements /

interactions with the post Back end data: •  What we covered earlier from post tracking •  Visits, time on site and conversion data

We want to use both data inputs to find the optimal time to post content

TWITTER

Accessing Twitter Analytics

Finding Your Top Tweets

Analyzing front end data

Dig into your content by asking questions: •  What was the Tweet about? •  What time of day did you post it? •  How many impressions / engagements did it get? •  Was there a link? An image? •  Did you use a hashtag? •  Did you tag someone (@user)?

QUORA

Accessing Quora Analytics

Accessing front end Quora data

Accessing back end Quora data

REDDIT

Manual metrics

Keeping tabs

Hard work pays off

WHO IS SHARING MY

CONTENT?

Report #1: Tracking organic shares

Insights: •  Who is sharing your content organically

Report: Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium; Under "Secondary Dimension" add "Landing Page"

Report #2: Tracking organic mentions

Insights: •  Who is talking about you and where •  Gives you the opportunity to jump into the conversation, engage and expand

your reach •  Only pulls through Google’s Data Hub partners

Report: Acquisition > Social > Data Hub Activity

Tool: mention.com

BONUS: HOW CAN I

SAVE TIME?

Applying your knowledge

You now know:

1. Which social networks you should focus on

2. What types of posts drive the most value

3. What type of content performs the best

4. People who like your content

5. The optimal times to post

Leveraging others based on data analysis

Automation tools

You know the best times and content to post – schedule it. •  Buffer, Hootsuite, etc

Streamlined reporting: Dashboards

Streamlined reporting: Dashboards

THANK

YOU

RYAN STEWART HTTP://WEBRIS.ORG/SOCIAL-MEDIA-ANALYTICS/ HTTPS://WWW.TWITTER.COM/RYANWASHERE HELLO@WEBRIS.ORG WEBRIS