Unique Original Articles » Tracking Social Media Analytics

Social media is the hottest phenomenon in online marketing. Although relatively new, many social websites like Facbook, Twitter, flickr, delicious and Digg have become important sources of website traffic. With this shift of interest into social networking websites there is a parallel interest and increase in demand for analytical data related to social media.



What are the questions marketers want to know? Most marketers need to understand who is using these networks, where they come from and what topics interest them. When one can answer these questions accurately it can mean the difference between success and failure for a social media campaign.



Because social media is relatively new most people have no idea where to begin to find tools to specifically analyze social media data. The first place to start is to define the information you want to gain from any social media analysis.





· Will you want to track how people are sharing your website with others?

· Do you want to know how many visitors become fans of your website?

· Do you want to track a specific social media campaign?

· Are you interested in staying abreast of new trends?

· Do you need to know how many positive or negative comments are being circulated on various social networking sites?



Each type of inquiry requires a different set of tools and a different focus.





Most marketers use an analytics software like Google Analytics(), Woopra, or Omniture to track basic website data including traffic, visitors, pages per visitor, and traffic sources. Most of these analytics tools track a wealth of data, but none of them are designed to track social media data. The good news is that there are a few ways you can optimize your analytics software for social media. Here are a few quick tips that will help you to optimize your analytics for social media:



· Try using a Social Media Metrics Plugin: Social Media Metrics is a extension tool that adds a social media information layer to Google Analytics. It will provide information on Diggs, stumbles, delicious bookmarks, and more for each individual page. It’s not a perfect solution but it can provide some valuable social media information.

· Most analytics software has custom campaigns to make it easy to track specific events. You can track a specific Twitter traffic campaign or DiggBar URL with campaigns. This allows you to control information in greater detail for social media events that you specify.

· Another way to get specific information on social media is to set up your email to receive traffic stats from top social media websites (i.e. Digg, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) You will also want to reorganize any dashboards you use to include this information for easy access.



Web analytics tools don’t provide you with all the tools you will need to begin tracking social media analytics. It would be wise to add more tools to your analytics toolbox that can track detailed social metrics like these:

· SocialToo: A comprehensive tool for creating social surveys and tracking social stats. Social Too will also send you a daily email describing follows and unfollows on Twitter.

· Use a URL Shortener: It is wise to use one that has analytics information, like bit.ly. This tool will track the number of clicks, where traffic comes from, and what time clicks occur.

· PostRank/AideRSS: This site provides detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and FriendFeed. The real benefit is that all of the data is contained in one place. It’s works very well for blogs and websites that have a lot of content.

· Xinureturns: This tool provides a great dashboard overview of how your website is doing in the world of social media. You can run a report and receive information on Technorati, Google Pagerank, Diggs, and even backlinks to your website.





If you take advantage of these tools you will be building a library of resources that will enable you to successfully implement a solid social media analytics tracking program. Do engage in programs that will help you learn how to use and interpret the data you collect. Analysis takes time and effort. Numbers alone are not useful if you do not have the understanding to interpret them correctly. If need be consider hiring an experienced consultant to assist you or look for online seminars or local classes to help educate yourself.
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