Google Analytics 101, Part 2
Besides tracking visitors to your site from other web sites, Google Analytics can also help you measure social media traffic, phone conversions, and AdWords traffic.
Besides tracking visitors to your site from other web sites, Google Analytics can also help you measure social media traffic, phone conversions, and AdWords traffic.
Now that we’ve discussed some of the basics of using Google Analytics, let’s move on and explore some other useful features and tools.
First, we’ll look at how Google Analytics plays a part in measuring social media traffic. Then, we’ll review how it can help with tracking phone conversions. Finally, we’ll look at how to link your AdWords account to your analytics account for better ROI tracking.
Measuring Social Media Traffic through Advanced Segmentation
One of the most challenging things about getting involved with social media is measuring effectiveness. Tool vendors are scrambling to build tools that will allow the measurement of sentiment, profitability, traffic, etc. If you’ve already set up Google analytics, then you’re on your way to measuring social media traffic. Let’s take a closer look.
The idea here is to set up a segment to monitor traffic from either one specific site like Twitter, or multiple sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Let’s set one up for analyzing Twitter traffic. After you log into Google Analytics, find the gray Settings box on the left. Here, you’ll find a link to “advanced segments.” Then:
Name your segment below and click on the button “create segment” and you’re done. To activate the measuring, go back to your dashboard and look in the upper right for “advanced segments.” You should now see a checkbox for Twitter Traffic. Check it and apply. That’s it.
Now you should see any Twitter traffic in relationship to all of your traffic. If you would like to track multiple sites at once, then in the “value” box just put a “|” symbol between each site like this: twitter.com | facebook.com | linkedin.com.
To learn more about segmentation, look at Avinash Kaushik’s blog, Google Blog, or this nifty YouTube video.
Tracking Phone Calls with Google Analytics
Now let’s say you have a small company and you want to track the number of telephone call leads generated as a result of landing on your site. This is the case for many companies who simply need to talk to their customers before a sale can happen.
Other tools and companies plug into Google Analytics to help you track phone conversions. ClickThrough Marketing just announced a module, and also look at the Google Analytics Blog for other sources.
Integrating your PPC campaign into Google Analytics
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get some better insight into your PPC campaign right from Google Analytics? Well you can. Here’s how:
Once this is set up, your AdWords and Analytics accounts will be linked and sharing information. Look at the Google Analytics help page for more info.
These are just a small sampling of ways that Google Analytics can help your organization grow. If you’ve been using Google Analytics and have found other nifty ways it has helped you, please post a comment below.
To see more examples, visit this link on more useful tools.