Partners Blog
What's new @ Google? Tips and tools for agencies
Capturing the Value of Social Media Using Google Analytics
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Measuring the value of social media has been a challenge for marketers. And with good reason: it’s hard to understand exactly what is happening in an environment where activity occurs both on and off your website. Since social media is often an upper funnel player in a shopper’s journey, it's not always easy to determine which social channels actually drive value for your business and which tactics are most effective.
But as the social industry matures, marketers and web analysts need true outcome-oriented reports. After all, although social is growing in popularity, brand websites - not social networks - remain the place where people most often purchase or convert.
That’s why we’re releasing a new set of Social reports within Google Analytics. The new reports bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about - allowing you to better measure the full value of the social channel for your business. We wanted to help you with 3 things:
Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs
The Social reports allow you to analyze all of this information together and see a more complete picture of social impact than often used today. Here are a couple of the things you can do with our new reports:
Overview Report: see social performance at a glance and its impact on conversions
The Overview report allows you to see at a glance how much conversion value is generated from your social channels. The Social Value visualization compares the number and monetary value of all your goal completions against those that resulted from social referrals - both as last interaction, and assisted.
A visit from a social referral may result in conversion immediately or it may assist in a conversion that occurs later on. Referrals that lead to conversions immediately are labeled as Last Interaction Social Conversion. If a referral from a social source doesn’t immediately generate a conversion, but the visitor returns later and converts, the referral is included as an Assisted Social Conversion.
Conversions Report: which goals are being impacted by social media
With the Conversions report, marketers can now measure the value of each individual social channel by seeing the conversion rates of each social network and the monetary value they drive to your business.
For example, you can see the effect that social content (i.e. a new video you created) had on conversions. Look at the time graph to see whether Goal Completions via Social Referral peaked after the content was published. Remember that you need to
define goals
and goal values in order to see data in this report, so tailor it to the things that matter to your business. Networks with a higher assisted / last interaction conversions ratio provide greater assisted conversions.
Social Sources - find out how visitors from different sources behave
The Social Sources report shows engagement and conversion metrics for each social network so you can see how people are interacting with your content and whether it’s leading to a desired outcome.
For example, if you run social campaigns that promote specific products, you can see via the Social Visitor Flow whether visitors from each social network entered your site through these product pages and whether they continued on to other parts of the site or whether they exited.
Social Plugins: find the content that’s good enough to share
If you publish content, you'll want to know which articles are most commonly shared or recommended, and on which social networks they're being shared. The Social Plugin report shows which articles on your site are receiving the most engagement and which social buttons - for example, Google +1 - are being clicked to share them.
You can use this information to create more of the type of content that's popular with your visitors, and test different layouts of social sharing buttons to improve use by your community.
Activity Stream: what’s happening outside of your website
While the other reports show you the impact that social engagement is having on your site, the Activities Stream tab (located within the sources report) shows how people are engaging socially with your content off your site across the social web.
For content that was shared publicly, you can see the URLs they shared, how and where they shared (via a “reshare” on Google+ for example), and what they said. Currently, activities are reported for Google+ and across a growing list of our
Social Data Hub
partners including recently signed brands Badoo, Disqus, Echo, Hatena and Meetup.
These new social reports will be available for all users over the next few weeks under the Standard Reporting Tab - please take a look and tell us what you think.
Posted by Phil Mui, Group Product Manager
Measuring modern media consumption
Monday, March 19, 2012
There are a number of companies involved in developing ways to measure how people consume media—like TV and radio ratings, web traffic analysis and newspaper and magazine circulation figures. They all share the same goal: figuring out what content is popular (and what’s not). Many of these companies use panel-based research, enlisting a group of volunteers who report on their media consumption.
One of the current focuses of this type of research is to understand how people are consuming media across multiple screens, and how measurement can best reflect this new era, where a user watches her favorite TV show while surfing the web and watching a video on her cell phone. We think this is an important area of research and are currently partnering with industry players across a number of research projects around the world, all with the goal of helping content providers and advertisers deliver compelling experiences across these different screens.
In the U.S., these projects include the
Screenwise Panels
, as well as a
partnership with NBC
to look at how people interact with Olympics content across TV, the web and mobile devices. These panels are voluntary to join, participants can leave at any time and we are transparent in terms of what information is collected and how it’s used.
Once our research is complete, we plan to share both our methodology and our findings. We believe that an improved understanding of how media work together and better measurement that connects online, offline and mobile media will benefit the industry as a whole, and we look forward to working with our partners on these efforts.
Posted by Nick Arini, Product Manager
Follow the experts, not the noise, at SXSW
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
We're starting up the engines -- the 2012 South by Southwest Interactive Festival is only a few days away! For those of you who are going to be in Austin, we can't wait to see you at the
Google Village
for an awesome agenda that includes everything from code labs to LEGO hackathons to the roving {RV}IP karaoke express.
But whether you're in Austin or elsewhere, we want to help you keep in the loop on all things SXSW, whether it's what apps everyone is testing out or which celebrities have showed up to crash late-night parties. Chances are, you don’t want to know everything -- you want to read what interests you. And we know there’s a ton of noise. So we've asked a handful of SXSW-bound Googlers to curate Google+ Circles of experts so that you can follow those on the ground whether you're interested in Austin locals or visiting social-media geeks. Check them out:
Creative minds
, curated by
Ben Malbon
Social media experts
, curated by
Louis Gray
Digital media pros
, curated by
Caroline McCarthy
Google SXSW Speakers
, curated by
Chris Messina
Google+ Street Team
, curated by
Toby Stein
Spice up your Google+ feed - just click on the circle to add.
We hope you're looking forward to SXSW as much as we are, whether it's in the flesh or over the series of tubes. Safe travels to all those who are Austin-bound!
Posted by
Kari Clark
, Product Marketing Manager, Google+ for Businesses
Introducing the Learn with Google Webinar Program
Monday, March 5, 2012
At Google, one of our goals is to help make the web work for your business. Today we’re introducing the
Learn with Google webinar program
that does just that, by sharing best practices and tips across a variety of products, including search ads, mobile ads, display ads, YouTube and Google Analytics.
We’re kicking off the program with eight live webinars in March:
March 13 at 10am PDT: 5 Tips to Start Marketing your Business with Video
March 14 at 10am PDT: Introduction to the Google Display Network
March 15 at 10am PDT: GoMo: Mobilize your Site and Maximize your Advertising
March 20 at 10am PDT: Understanding Mobile Ads Across Marketing Objectives
March 21 at 10am PDT: Reaching Your Goals with Google Analytics
March 22 at 10am PDT: GoMo for Publishers
March 27 at 10am PDT: Manage Large AdWords Campaigns with Less Effort
March 28 at 10am PDT: 3 Tips to Get More out of your Video Advertising Campaigns
Check out our new
webinar page
to register for any of the sessions or to access on-demand webinars. We’ll be adding new webinars as they’re scheduled, so check back regularly for updates. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by downloading our
Learn with Google Webinar calendar
to automatically see upcoming webinars in your Google Calendar.
Whether your goal is to engage the right customers at the right time, make better decisions faster, or get the most from your marketing dollars, we hope that you’ll use these tips and how-to’s to maximize the impact of digital and grow your business. We’re looking forward to having you join us!
Posted by Erica Tsai, Product Marketing Manager
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