Google’s induction of “Google Search Plus Your World” has made B2B marketers everywhere feel compelled (and rightly so) to incorporate social media into their marketing. The question from the corner office often becomes “how do I measure my ROI from social media activity?”
Believe it or not, it can actually be done, and with Google Analytics. In this three-part series, we’ll be looking at three ways to do just that:
- Campaign Tagging
- Advanced Segments
- Profile Filters
Campaign Tagging
Not strictly for social media, campaign tagging allows you to track the performance of individual campaigns. This is done by adding a code to your marketing URLs. This small piece of code tells Google Analytics when someone clicks on a link, even if the link is not on your website.
The tool used to generate this code is called URL builder. This tool is not easily found, as it is buried in Analytics help, but can be accessed either by using the link in this blog, or by doing a Google search for “URL builder” and finding the link.
While this URL builder is extremely useful for creating links for things like banner ads and email links, it is also useful in Social Media use to measure specific campaign performance, compare campaigns or social mediums, and to group campaigns together.
Your reporting on campaign tagging is found in the campaigns report, sorted by Medium.
Further information on campaign tagging can be found in Google’s Analytics Help . I also recommend a great blog post from Bit Cadet that goes into more detail about Campaign Tagging, and the meaning behind each of the facets of the query string.
Have you used campaign tagging for your social media effort? What have been the benefits?
Next time: An in-depth look at Advanced Segments and measuring Social Media ROI
