Social Media: You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure

Social Media is a powerful tool. But, as with any tool, you need to be able to prove it produces the desired results. If you use a hammer to pound in a nail, when you're done, the nail is where you intended... results! If you use Facebook posts to drive visits to your website, you need to be able to measure if it's working. Google analytics can help you do that measuring. 

An article from the social media smarties at Hootsuite gives us a 6-step guide to using Google analytics to do just that:

Step 1: Create social media objectives and goals for your website

Before you can begin tracking your social media initiatives in Google Analytics you need to create social media objectives and goals. These objectives and goals should be part of your overall social media marketing plan and should be aligned with your broader marketing and business strategy. If your objective is to use social media to increase website traffic, then create S.M.A.R.T. goals that will help you achieve that objective.

For example: To increase website traffic by 15% in Q2, 100 Tweets a month will be dedicated to driving traffic to the website.

Step 2: Sign up for Google Analytics

This step is extremely important if you want to track social media in Google Analytics. It’s important that you have a Google Analytics account to access your website traffic reports. Create a new Google Analytics account, if you don’t have one. Visit google.com/analytics, click Sign in to Google Analytics or Create an account button on the top right hand corner, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Read the next four steps here.

At Front Burner Marketing, we use a wide variety of analytical tools to make sure we are getting the results we want from our marketing efforts. We understand that you can't manage what you don't measure. We use a broad arsenal of marketing tactics and approaches to ensure we're getting you the traffic and leads you want.

Our favorite breed of marketing is Inbound marketing. Learn more about it by downloading our Step-by-Step Guide to Inbound Marketing below.