With social media interest and use booming, most companies are looking for ways to track their results. Most use Google Analytics, but don’t fully grasp the full capabilities. To help students in our Google Analytics training classes, we asked Google Analytics experts to provide their insight to social media tracking in this multi-blog series. Today, we welcome Jeff Sauer, VP of Interactive Marketing at Three Deep Marketing. Below is a question and answer session with Jeff.

How did you get started in the world of web analytics?

I started off as a web developer, concentrating on building websites. Web “stats” tools at the time were ugly and inaccurate, so never paid much attention.  Got into search marketing and built traffic for clients through paid and organic search.  Some traffic was great and some did not convert visitors at all.  I needed a tool to track this efficiently and I could not afford enterprise software to use on SMB clients, so I gave a beta test of Google Analytics a shot.  It opened the doors to the “wow” that is modern Web Analytics.

What is the number one selling point for using Google Analytics to track your social media activities?

I wouldn’t say that Google Analytics is the tool for tracking social activities, but rather a vital element in the tracking toolbox.  Google Analytics is still fairly confined to activity happening inside of your website, as well as what activity driving visitors to your site.  For understanding what social media visitors do within your site, their browsing and purchasing activity, there is no better tool than Google Analytics when properly configured.  However, to understand the entire social ecosystem surrounding a brand, incorporating metrics from tools and services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. is equally important.  There are third party services that consolidate this data through API’s and create a true social media dashboard.  One such tool is PostRank Analytics, which was recently purchased by Google.

If you could offer one step-by-step tutorial for someone using Google Analytics with their social media work, what would it be?

We have created two presentations on Slideshare that show how to track incoming social media traffic.

Google Analytics: Make Your Site Work Harder (check out slides 8-15!)

Google Analytics: Going Beyond Traffic

What advice do you have for someone who is just starting to track their social media efforts with Google Analytics?

Make sure that you add campaign variables to each social media post and that you are consistent with tagging your URL’s with campaign variables. If you are not, you will have a very difficult time tracking activities. Keep a spreadsheet with your tracking URL’s or utilize a tool that automatically adds GA campaign variables to your posts.

Anything else you would like to share?

Since social media is so vast in scope, it may be overwhelming to try and measure.  The important thing to realize is that there are a finite number of activities that social media traffic can do on your site, so it’s important to measure the rate at which each item happens.  The best way to do this is configure conversion goals.  We recommend tracking both macro (sales) and micro conversions (engagement, downloads, time on site, page views, etc.) to help understand the economic impact of your activities.   Another thing to measure is time saved through social media on customer support.

Three Deep Marketing offers social media monitoring and management services as well as Google Analytics Consulting. We are based in St. Paul, Minnesota.