Google Analytics can be a big help to maximize the effectiveness of your social media strategy.

Incorporating Google Analytics Into Your Social Media Strategy

Most marketers are familiar with using Google Analytics to monitor the performance of a landing page, but this technology has applications for social media as well.

While social media can be invaluable for increasing brand awareness, some companies still shy away from implementing a strategy because of the difficulty of tracking results on these platforms.

You have more control over the analytics on your own website, but social media is still worthwhile. However, you can't start Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles and expect the platforms to do all the work themselves.

Where to Start With Social Media

Google Analytics can be a big help to maximize the effectiveness of your social media strategy.

Just like any other form of marketing, you need to create a strong strategy for social media complete with specific goals. Additionally, it's important to determine your reasons for embarking with social.

If you create a Facebook page just because your competitors are doing it, you probably won't get much out of social media, according to Memeburn. However, if you enter social media with a tangible goal, such as growing a follower base, boosting sales or generating leads, you're more likely to succeed because you can more effectively measure your progress.

Measurement is crucial to ensure you're on track to meet your social media goals. Marketers can study basic metrics, including number of visitors, time spent on the site, marketing costs, actions like shares and likes and brand awareness.

Although some of these measures may not be exact, they can provide a fairly accurate indication of performance.

Taking Measurement a Step Further

Google Analytics can be a big help to maximize the effectiveness of your social media strategy.

Social media tools are highly accessible and cost-effective, which is one of the reasons they are so appealing to nearly every brand. But it's important to remember that analytics and A/B testing are key for getting the most benefit from these platforms.

Google Analytics should be incorporated with social media to reach goals, especially because it includes a feature to monitor how many of your website visitors are referred by social networks, Social Media Today stated.

There are a number of ways analytics can help you make your social media strategies more effective:

Network Referrals Report

You may maintain a presence on multiple social platforms without a clear understanding of which profiles are driving the most traffic back to your website.

Network referrals tell you which profiles generates the most traffic and the average session duration and number of pages visited per session. While this information can help you refine your social media strategy, it's important to pay attention to visitor engagement as well.

The networks that drive the most traffic may not be the ones that send the most engaged users to your landing pages.

Conversions Report

This report can be particularly beneficial if you want to measure the monetary results of your social media efforts.

While many networks offer a number of free features, most companies choose to invest. The conversions report ranks the different social networks you utilize in terms of goal completions.

Landing Page Reports

This report provides an indication of the pages visitors are using to enter your website. Should you be promoting blog posts or special offers? Historical traffic patterns can help you refine your social media promotions by sending visitors to the right landing pages.

If how-to blogs are performing best, it may be a good idea to continue promoting this type of post. Landing page reports also allow you to monitor how long individuals spend on a page after arriving from social media.

Analytics are essential for reaching your social media goals. Because these platforms can take a lot of work to succeed, you want to make sure you're maximizing effectiveness.

What are some other social media metrics you measure with Google Analytics?