How to Coax Social Media Insights from Google Analytics

We're starting to use #GA to gather #SocialMedia #Insights. Let the fun begin.

For most of us, analytics software behaves like idiot savants: they can surprise us with amazing feats of calculation, but totally miss the social cues that the rest of us take for granted. So, it’s no wonder that analytics packages struggle to tell us how we are doing socially. As a follow-on to my column last month on measuring social media , I’d like to show you how I got Google Analytics to tell me how I was doing socially. Ask Very Specific Questions Google Analytics (GA) is good at counting things. You can’t ask GA how your social network feels about you; it doesn’t get the concept of feeling. You can ask it to count how many people click on links in your social media posts. Last month, I asked some very specific questions in the form of a report: Which social networks were delivering new subscribers to my email list? Which social networks were giving me the best con...

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