The effectiveness of advertising on social networks: indicators and stages of evaluation. Google Analytics for SMM
In February, we published an article “Analysis of indicators for tracking the effectiveness of Internet marketing.” Readers loved the material and demanded more.
You asked, we did: we tried to collect all the most important indicators for analyzing social media marketing. The information will be useful to text message operators, managers and business owners.
Warning to customers: do not go to extremes, evaluating SMM either by one indicator or by all at once. In the first case, a single metric shows a distorted picture and is easily inflated by an unscrupulous performer. The second assessment method requires too much time and effort.
Metrics for assessing subscriber dynamicsLet's start with metrics that reflect the dynamics of subscribers and, therefore, the effectiveness of the SMM strategy as a whole.
- Number of subscribers (Followers)
Perhaps the most famous metric in SMM: it is used everywhere in reports and is set as a KPI. Of course, you can cheat followers, but such scams are easy to spot.
If you have any suspicions, you need to study the accounts of newcomers - bots and “dogs” are immediately visible. At the same time, it is worth comparing the geography, age and other important data of new subscribers with portraits of the target audience. Characteristics vary greatly - questions to the SMS operator.
Read more about independently searching for bots in social networks and services for identifying fake accounts in the article by Dmitry Dementiy.
Formula: (number of new subscribers / total number of subscribers) * 100%.
The formula can also be improved by substituting net growth into the numerator: the difference between the number of new subscribers and the number of those who left the community. This will make it easier to assess audience interest, the relevance of posts, and the effectiveness of advertising, if it is included.
- Number of Views
For reports, as a rule, a summary indicator is used: the number of views for all community posts for a certain period.
- Reach
Reach shows the number of people who interacted with a community post(s) at least once.
As in the case of the previous indicator, customers are mainly reported on total coverage. It is considered separately if there is an intermediate task: to compare the effectiveness of several posts.
Viral reach directly depends on interest in the content, paid reach depends on the advertising budget. Organic reach is influenced by the number of followers and the frequency of publishing content, but there is also an unstoppable force - social media ranking algorithms.
If KPI's are limited to the dynamics of subscribers and posting, the Peakfeed service is suitable for tracking. It can work with 8 social networks (VK and OK, however, are not included in the list). Cost – from $5 per month.
Livedune will do a better job of tracking most important indicators - subscribers, reach, views and engagement metrics (which will be discussed in the next section). Tariffs start from 195 rubles. “Livedune” knows how to work with all Russian social networks and even LiveJournal.
Now about the metrics that reflect various user reactions. Likes, comments, shares or reposts are the simplest, well-known, but not the only indicators for assessing audience feedback.
- Love Rate
Likes in terms of audience size. Formula: Likes / Followers * 100%.
- Talk Rate
Comments in terms of audience size. Formula: Comments / Followers * 100%.
- Amplification Rate
Synonym: growth rate. Formula: Shares / Posts (number of posts) * 100%.
AR characterizes the virality of content. The higher the indicator, the greater the free reach and the cheaper it is to attract subscribers.
Sometimes likes, shares, comments and their coefficients are not calculated separately, but rather a more general indicator is taken - the volume of engagement (Engagement Volume). Formula: Likes + Comments + Shares.
- Audience Engagement Rate (ER)
There are several ER formulas.
One calculation option: take the number of community members who made at least one engagement (like/repost/comment), then divide it by the total number of subscribers.
There is also a formula: (sum of all engagements / number of subscribers) * 100%.
Advice to specialists from Daria Samoilova, SMM manager at Netology: “If you report on subscriber growth, try to show it in conjunction with ER. Because the best guarantee of the absence of bots and “dead souls” is growing or at least not falling engagement in the account. This is important."
The disadvantage of this indicator is that it is subjective: it does not take into account coverage, engagement on specific days, and interaction with individual posts. Therefore, experienced text message operators use several subtypes of ER.
- Engagement Rate by Reach (ERR)
Formula: (number of engagements / reach) * 100%.
The metric shows the approximate share of those who saw community posts and, one way or another, reacted to them.
- Daily Engagement Rate (ER Day)
Formula: (number of engagements per day / number of subscribers) * 100%.
Daily engagement shows how many times per day the average subscriber is active.
- Engagement Rate of Post (ER Post)
Formula: (sum of engagements per post / number of subscribers on the date of publication) * 100%.
The indicator allows you to assess interest in specific publications and compare posts with each other in terms of effectiveness.
- Engagement Rate by Views (ER View)
Formula: (number of engagements per post / number of views) * 100%.
One must be careful with conclusions based on this indicator, because social networks do not count unique views.
- Average Response Time
The metric reflects the time it takes community administration/brand representatives to respond to audience messages. This is an important indicator of quality of service and respect for customers.
To estimate the average response time over time, you can use the following formula: (response time for the previous period / response time for the reporting period - 1) * 100%.
- Response Rate
The metric shows the percentage of questions that users received an answer to. Formula: (number of answers / number of questions) * 100%.
According to JagaJam data collected across Russia, brands respond slowly and do not answer even half of the questions.
Conclusion: with the help of quality service you can outperform most competitors.
For regular monitoring of responsiveness, the same JagaJam is suitable. It can collect statistics on both your brand community and competitor groups. In addition to response rate, the service can calculate subscriber dynamics, engagement and other important SMM indicators. Personal tariff plan in JagaJam – 2,700 rubles per month.
There is also a foreign service for improving the quality of customer service on social networks - CX Social. It monitors posts mentioning a brand and notifies you about them in a timely manner. Rates are unknown, but you can request a demo.
The metrics from the previous sections are mainly about the internal SMM kitchen. Businesses are interested in sales. We'll tell you how you can evaluate the efforts of the SMS operator to bring the audience to a purchase.
Important: you cannot set KPIs for sales, as they are influenced by many other factors that do not depend on SMM.
Liya Kanarskaya, remote SMM manager, says: “Very often you can hear this from potential clients:
- “Ten thousand will be a hundred thousand profit?”
- “Do you guarantee plus 1,000 subscribers?”
- “We will pay you a percentage of sales.”
But SMM affects sales and profits only indirectly. Social networks do not shape consumer needs; they are just one of the brand’s communication channels.”
- Traffic from social networks (Social Traffic).
In the first 2-3 months after creating a community, it’s definitely not a good idea to set strict requirements for traffic to the site for the text message operator. Keep in mind that building trust takes time: new subscribers are in no hurry to click on links to unfamiliar sites.
- Conversion rate or click-through rate (Click-Through Rate, CTR).
A basic indicator in internet marketing, it is used at almost all stages of the sales funnel.
CTR in SMM can be calculated as follows: divide the number of clicks on a link by the number of post impressions, and multiply the result by 100%. If the site is promoted by targeted advertising, the click-through rate is calculated in the same way: ad impressions are simply substituted into the denominator.
- Cost Per Click (CPC).
This indicator is known to everyone who has at least once set up targeted or contextual advertising. However, CPC can also be calculated for general SMM using the following formula: all expenses for maintaining social networks / number of clicks to the site.
- Number of leads (Leads).
The metric shows the number of contacts of potential clients, that is, the number of applications / orders / calls received through social networks.
- Cost per lead (CPL).
Formula: (amount of expenses / number of leads).
Leads and CPL are easy to calculate when managers process leads using social media apps. Try to offer potential clients as many options as possible for ordering: not everyone is comfortable filling out forms on landing pages or putting products in online store carts.
Let's touch on the topic of the number of KPIs once again.
Daria Samoilova, SMM manager of Netology, spoke especially for Texterra about her experience:
“For me personally, 5 metrics are optimal: website traffic, conversion to leads, subscriber growth, reach, Engagement Rate. This is a necessary basis from which the effectiveness of work can be seen without further ado.
Someone adds a breakdown to ER by indices of communication, gain, and involvement - that is, they count comments, reposts, and likes separately. Then there might be eight metrics.”
- Duration of work.
- Number of community members (as of the date the report was generated).
- Subscriber growth in 1 month.
- Full audience coverage.
- Number of unique visitors.
- The total number of views of posts.
- Number of posts (messages).
- News update frequency.
- Top 5 popular posts (by reach).
Most companies use social networks to get traffic to their website. But the question arises: how to evaluate the effectiveness in this case? What to focus on? Is it just the size of the group, or are there other important points that should not be overlooked?
Indeed, the sheer size of the public, as they say, is not an indicator at all. Elementary, it can be 100% purchased. In this case, even if you have a million people, the traffic will be neither cold nor hot.
Although theoretically, of course, the larger the number, the more people can potentially go to your site. But don’t forget about the quality of subscribers. On average, “in the hospital” about 25% are active, the rest are just hanging out for the sake of mass participation. Therefore, it is necessary to keep the attention and interest of the audience in good shape. Who said it would be easy?
So, what KPIs should you focus on if you need to evaluate the effectiveness of SMM? In order to evaluate effectiveness, it is worth regularly studying site traffic analytics and monitoring how your actions are reflected in the indicators. And now, more specifically, what exactly is worth looking at.
There is a simple pattern to follow: the larger your community becomes, the more people should come to your site.
The graph below shows the traffic to our website. As you can see, it is gradually growing. Another question is: how does it grow? Due to an increase in the number of subscribers or due to increased interest in services and willingness to place an order? To find out, you need to analyze other KPI indicators.
We regularly look at how much time our social media users spend on the site. But there is no point in expecting an increasing graph here. Look at which publications received a good response and analyze the reasons for failures, so that in the future you can adjust your work with the public and give users only interesting information.
And two more points related to the depth of viewing: 1. If a person views several pages, this may indicate that he is interested, is looking for answers to his questions, or is trying to remove all the fears that are associated with making a decision. 2. The more internal transitions on a site, the better its behavioral indicators. This means that robots will be more willing to move it in search results.
Important! Browsing depth for social media users may be lower than the site average. This is fine. Do not forget that a person knows about you from the public and it is easier for him to make a decision about a purchase/order/call. Also, the viewing depth cannot be analyzed by a graph. Here you need to look at how users react to posts and evaluate why they behaved that way.
Of course, it will not be possible to build a positive, clearly defined trend here, but this is not necessary.
Using the graph, we look at which days there were more refusals when switching from social networks, check the publications during this time and analyze what users might not like. We also look at the lowest rejection values and also analyze what publications this reaction was to.
Using our website as an example, you can see that there are days with a minimum number of failures, and there are days when the failures are 100% (for example, December 28). This is due to the approach of the New Year, and everyone who came in was probably simply distracted by pre-holiday chores.
To analyze conversion, it is better to use Google Analytics. It has many options for settings, which allows you to get a more complete picture.
Important. Please note that in Google analytics you can look not only at conversions based on the last visit (how many people bought something from you directly from social networks), but also at conversions based on associated sequences. This means that the system will show you conversions that included a visit to the site from social networks, but it was not the last one. It’s also worth setting up the value of the purchase, then you can also see the benefits from social networks in monetary terms.
This graph should ideally increase gradually. After all, the more people in the group and transitions to the site, the more purchases should be made.
The graph shows our example of conversions for the analyzed period. There are 3 circles visible here. Large - the total number of conversions on the site for the analyzed period, medium - conversions taking into account social networks, the last circle (dot on the graph) - conversions based on the last visit from social networks.
Conclusion. In order to work effectively with social networks and receive effective traffic to the site from them, you need to constantly adjust your work taking into account the analysis of statistics counter data. This is the only way to build an effective system.
Therefore, we install and configure a metrics system. If you can’t handle it yourself, contact our specialists, we will help.
Social networks can bring you tons of free traffic, do not require initial investment, and scale well. But to achieve the final goal, you need to understand whether you are moving in the right direction at all.
We already wrote in a previous article that when assessing performance indicators in social networks, it is worth paying attention to such indicators as engagement rate, reach and follower growth, acquisition of clients and associated direct conversion (Assisted and Direct Conversion). And if everything seems to be clear with the engagement rate, reach and subscriber growth (the data can be viewed on social networks, or in the KUKU.io extension for analyzing social networks), then such important performance indicators as customer acquisition and associated and direct conversions may be unfairly stay away.
Fortunately, Google Analytics, when combined with social media analytics services, gives us information about more than just traffic sources, visitor paths, demographics, and conversions. Using Google Analytics, you can also learn how social networks affect final conversion, how much money the popular social networks on your list bring in, which links attract the most attention, and how much the content you publish is able to retain and re-engage your audience.
Sounds good. Now I suggest you look at where to find this data in Google Analytics.
If you want to receive social media data from Google Analytics, you need to start by connecting Google Analytics to your site and Goal settings (as a result, conversion tracking). As goals, you can select registration, subscription, starting a trial period, clicking on the “Download”, “Buy” button or, for example, “Add to cart”. You can learn about setting up goals in Google Analytics here:
If you need to target a button click, you can find information on how to set up the necessary events and virtual pages in this article.
Once the goals are set and you have verified that the data is being collected correctly, we can move on to the next steps. You can find reports on social networks in the Traffic sources tab:
Next, you can select the tab that interests you, here you can find: a general overview of traffic, information on conversions, login pages, as well as recent activities on social networks (which will most likely be useless to you, and then I’ll tell you why) , backlinks, user paths and plugins.
Social Network Analysis: Traffic OverviewHere you can see a graph of the importance of social networks. Google Analytics cuts through all the (unnecessary?) information and shows you a fascinating bouquet of sessions and conversions.
Conversions. In the top screenshot, the number 1,199 is the total number of all conversions from absolutely all traffic sources (direct, referral, social networks, etc.) for the selected period.
Associated conversions. They can be displayed automatically in place of the “conversions from social networks” item or calculated as the difference between “conversions from social networks” and “conversions from the last interaction”. Assisted conversions are those conversions that social media helped you achieve. Visitors came from social networks to your site at least once without converting, but their subsequent visits from other sources led to the desired result.
For example, a person saw your post on Facebook and went to the page and left it. After a few days, he remembered your service or product and returned, registering, subscribing, making a purchase, etc. By the way, you can see how many days later in the “Time to conversion” tab.
Of course, there are some “BUTs” here. Let’s say that if a person used one device during the first transition, say, a mobile device, and came back again to complete the conversion from another, then the associated conversion will not be credited to the social network. However, by considering this indicator, you can track the general trend and observe the overall picture.
Direct conversion (Conversion based on last interaction). This is the conversion that users make directly from social networks.
To display this interesting chart, goals must be initially configured. If you want to display not only goals, but also the money that conversions from social networks bring you, assign a value in the goal settings.
Social media statistics: conversionsIn this tab you see two graphs: sessions from social networks and all sessions. And now I have good news and bad news. I'll start with the good one. In order to see conversions and the growth trend of conversions from social networks, you do not need to configure anything. Google Analytics calculates all data on transitions from Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, Google+, etc. automatically. If you get a good mention on social media or people like your content, share it, like it, and click on it, you will see rises in the graph.
The bad news is that this information may not be accurate. For example, if you use any link shortening services to analyze social networks (say, to attach a UTM tag), the conversion data will go into direct or referral traffic and will be displayed in the “all sessions” graph, not “sessions from social media”. networks."
Add the New Users and Repeat Users segments to get an overview of the mix of new and repeat visits.
As we already wrote when talking about attracting users from social networks, it is impossible not to start with the frequency of transitions to your site. The metric divides visits to your site into two main categories: new and repeat. While repeat clicks reflect the effectiveness of your social media content and audience engagement, new clicks show whether by increasing your “reach” you are actually getting more clicks.
Social Media ActivitySocial Data Hub is a free platform for integrating social media activity feeds, including votes, comments, and +1s, with Google Analytics.In the Social Media Activity tab, you'll see the latest posts and conversations around your brand. But when I talk about social networks, I don't mean Facebook and Twitter, but also Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn and others. The Social Data Hub, with the help of which this data is loaded, has support for such social networks as Google+, Reddit, Disqus, and also, fortunately for the owners of VKontakte pages and groups, this social network. Full list:
So, when using this information in Google Analytics, remember that this is only a SMALL part of all the social activity around your site.
There are at least two ways to track how many visits your blog article or social media page is earning. The first way is to set up UTM tags automatically through the lazy posting app or Google Link Builder. If you need to quickly see the number of clicks from social networks to a specific link, go to the “Login Pages” tab.
By clicking on the link, you will see a breakdown of the number of transitions by specific social networks. Let’s say that our article on the KUKU.io blog on how to generate leads on VKontakte received 164 clicks, of which 154 were from Facebook and 10 from VKontakte. We still need to work on promoting content on this social network. :)
Social networks and website conversionLet's move on to the most interesting and revealing indicator, conversions. When we talk about measuring the effectiveness of online marketing, we often talk about the final conversion to a customer, as well as the return on investment. But the thing is that users of social networks do not always directly convert into your users on the site, and this is the difficulty in analyzing the effectiveness of social networks. On the other hand, you should not neglect the need for a brand presence on social networks.
And while search engines, email newsletters and other channels bring instant results, social networks increase brand awareness and ultimately bring in new users, but through other channels. These are associated (or assisted) conversions.
In the Conversions tab, select Assisted and Last Click Conversions. In the table you will see data for each social network:
At first glance, estimating the ratio may not seem obvious, but here's a hint: if the value in the last column is closer to 0, then social media traffic is converting into registrations/sales/subscriptions, but is not causing users to return to your product over time. having the greatest impact on the site’s associated conversion, an indicator close to 1 indicates a balance between associated and direct conversions. The higher it goes from 1, the greater the role social networks play as auxiliary sources.
In the case of KUKU.io (our service for SMM), we try to focus on promoting and developing the brand on social networks, so Facebook and Vkontakte are channels for us to attract new users. At the same time, statistics say that our Twitter profile is now bringing absolutely no results and something urgently needs to be done about it.
However, for other projects the picture may be diametrically opposite. For example, data from another site is a clear example of the balance between associated and direct conversions. We can conclude that visitors both move from social networks (in particular, Facebook), to our page, leave, and return again from other sources, and convert by direct click.
If you have multiple conversions configured on your site, you can select those for which you want to view data in the drop-down list above the graph.
Since you've made it this far, you'll probably find it interesting to see the associated conversions not only for traffic from social media, but also for other sources. If so, follow the steps:
Google Analytics also shows you not only how much traffic is coming to your site from each social network, but also helps you see the role of social networks in your overall acquisition strategy. To do this, select “Conversions”, then “Multi-Channel Funnels” and “Top Conversion Funnels”. In our case, social networks are involved in 4 of the top 10 conversion paths:
Google Analytics should help us track clicks on buttons on social media widgets embedded on a website, blog, or app. But if I open the “Plugins” tab, I, like most of you, see this picture:
Is there something missing? Yes data!
The fact is that Google Analytics automatically collects information only from the Google+ button. Unfortunately, in order for data on buttons of other social networks to appear here, it is not enough to copy a few lines from the documentation into the site code. You need to make the appropriate settings for each individual button, much like setting up events and goals.
In order to set up tracking of button interactions, you need to set up the _trackSocial tracking method, which will send data to Google Analytics as soon as the user clicks on the social network button.
Facebook pluginSo, if you want to store data about the likes, unlikes of your pages, and people who have shared your page, you can paste the following code on the page you want to track data from that has the Facebook plugin:
window.fbAsyncInit = function() ( try ( if (FB && FB.Event && FB.Event.subscribe) ( FB.Event.subscribe("edge.create", function(targetUrl) ( console.log("ga track fb like", targetUrl); ga("send", "social", ( "socialNetwork": "facebook", "socialAction": "like", "socialTarget": targetUrl )); )); FB.Event.subscribe( "edge.remove", function(targetUrl) ( console.log("ga track fb unlike", targetUrl); ga("send", "social", ( "socialNetwork": "facebook", "socialAction": "unlike ", "socialTarget": targetUrl )); )); FB.Event.subscribe("message.send", function(targetUrl) ( console.log("ga track fb share", targetUrl); ga("send", "social", ( "socialNetwork": "facebook", "socialAction": "send", "socialTarget": targetUrl ) ) ) catch(e) ( console.log("facebook script installation failed", e);