Do you want to boost your social media efforts? Are you looking for an easy way to measure results that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg? This post will show you how to use HootSuite and Google Analytics to give you a robust reporting dashboard that will demonstrate which pieces of your social media strategy are delivering.

In March, HootSuite announced their release of Social Analytics which combines the power of HootSuite’s ow.ly statistics with Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and more.  This means that with a HootSuite Pro account users have the ability to use a very powerful Google Analytics integration which will show how social media visitors converted. To take advantage of these new features follow these simple steps.

#1 Add Google Analytics to Your Website

To start you will need to add Google analytics to your website. First, go to the Google Analytics home page and create an account. The next step is to add the tracking code to your website. These instructions  (may be helpful. If you have a WordPress website there are several plug ins that can automate this process for you.

• Step A: Create a Google Analytics Account
• Step B: Add the Tracking Code to Your Site

#2 Add Goals and Funnels to Google Analytics

Next, you need to tell Google Analytics where your conversion pages are. This will enable you to track how many people “convert” through social media channels as well as other advertising channels. Google analytics allows you to define up to 10 pages that lead to a goal conversion. These are called “funnels”. This will allow you to track through an entire conversion process and will help you identify where people fall off so you can work to optimize the process later. This post provides instructions for setting up goals and funnels.  One tricky part is that you need to actually click on edit from the Google Analytics home screen to set up your goals, if you are in the reporting dashboard the option isn’t there.

You should think through how you will set up your funnels so you can ensure you have the appropriate steps defined in your conversion process. For example, if you have a lead generation form on a landing page here is an image of how you would set up your funnel. The last step is the thank you page which represents the actual conversion because you can’t get to the thank you page without finishing the process.

#3 Integrate Google Analytics with HootSuite

Click on Analytics to add your Google Analytics Profile

Now, we need to integrate your Google Analytics account with HootSuite so you can start tracking your social media campaigns. To get started open your HootSuite account. Slide your mouse to the left of your screen to activate the launch bar.

• Step A: Click on Analytics
• Step B: Click on Quick Analytics
• Step C: Click on Google Analytics
• Step D: Select Add Google Profile

#4: Start Adding Campaign Tracking to URLS

Click on the gear to reveal the Google Campaign Parameters Dashboard

So now you have the integrations set up and it is time to start putting them to work. The next step is one of my favorite HootSuite features and too many people don’t realize it exists. I call it the “Golden Egg” of Hootsuite. Every time you shorten a URL to your website you have the ability to add 3 campaign parameters that track all the way through your Google Analytics reports. The trick is to click on the little round gear next to your url in the shortener pane to reveal the advanced tab.

• Step A: Type your status update
• Step B: Put in your link
• Step C: Click on the gear to the left of the shrink button
• Step D: Select Google Analytics under “Add customer URL parameters”
• Step E: Add your three campaign parameters

Y0u will need to create a system for how you use the three parameters. One system that has been effective for my clients is:

• Source = Social Media Channel, i.e. Twitter, Facebook
• Medium = Social Media Account (if the client has multiple accounts) or Content Type i.e. status update, photo, video etc.
• Campaign = the campaign name

A word of caution on campaign naming, make sure it will tell you what actually worked. If you use “Spring Promo” as your campaign it is hard to tell which part of the spring promotion worked. I recommend that you create a database and number status updates so that we could tell exactly which update worked the best. It is your choice on how detailed you want to be, but the more defined your campaign name is the more you will be able to tell from your data. If you don’t want detailed campaign data, but just want to know a conversion came from social you can set this up once and click on the “Always apply when creating shortened links.”

#5: Monitor your Results

You can set up basic reports right within the HootSuite interface to provide an overview of how your social channels are comparing to website traffic. But to get to the real heart of the data, it is best to login to Google Analytics.

• Step A: Log in to Google Analytics
• Step B: Click on your website link to view your reports
• Step C: Click on traffic sources
• Step D: Click on Campaigns

From here you will be able to see which campaigns drive traffic to your site and which are converting. This will allow you to optimize your efforts based upon what you see delivering. Now, you can also start testing multiple approaches and tracking the results as well.

View your Campaign Dashboard to see the results of your Social Campaigns

While it may take a few steps to get there, this type of reporting will allow you to continually improve your results and provide benchmarks for future efforts. And the best part is that it’s almost free! Google analytics is free, but to enable the campaign tracking you will need to upgrade to a HootSuite Pro account. But at as low as $5.99 a month it is the least expensive option I’ve been able to find that provides real data that helps to drive better decisions. At this price point it is a great option even for small business owners.

How are you measuring your results? Did you know that HootSuite enables campaign tracking within Google Analytics? What tips do you have for measuring social media success?

Learn more at the Social Media Examiner Small Business Success Summit

*Disclaimer: Nichole Kelly is an avid HootSuite user who has collaborated with HootSuite on multiple projects to help their users better understand social media measurement including a white paper series. HootSuite provides Nichole with a free HootSuite Pro account for content development purposes. Nichole has not received any other compensation from HootSuite or Google.

Today is a big day for the Full Frontal ROI team. We have been working tirelessly on some amazing resources to help readers take their social media measurement strategies to a whole new level. We want to make sure that we provide you with content that gives you actionable tips that you can walk away and execute and we are delivering on that promise. Here’s what released today.

Social Media Measurement Boot Camp

You’ve been asking for courses on measuring social media and we are proud to announce that we are releasing the first no-fluff social media measurement boot camp. You won’t find a bunch of information on how to gather stats on mentions and retweets. No way, that’s not how the Full Frontal ROI team rolls. This is a series of 5 courses dedicated to tying your social media strategies to financial results. Plus they come in a convenient e-book format so you don’t have to schedule time at your desk to get the information. Thanks to the convenient PDF format you can take them with you on-the-go and even read them on your mobile device, iPad, or Kindle.

Check out the Full Frontal ROI Social Media Measurement Boot Camp

“This project has been a labor of love. It was something I had been working on in my spare time, but while I was working on the white papers with HootSuite, I decided there was no better time to jointly release a full-blown course with everything a marketer needs to measure social media to the results executives care about: sales, revenue and cost. That led to over 175 pages of actionable tips that are offered in The Full Frontal ROI Social Media Measurement Boot Camp. It truly represents some of the best content we’ve ever released and I’m very proud to finally introduce the Full Frontal ROI product line.” – Nichole Kelly

Social Media Measurement White Paper Series in Partnership with HootSuite

Nichole Kelly from the Full Frontal ROI team has been working with HootSuite (affiliate link) to release a series of 5 white papers over the next few weeks. Today, the first in the series “Introduction to Social Media Measurement” released with a huge bang. These white papers provide you with tips on measuring social media down to financial goals and even include How To documents for using HootSuite to get the metrics.

Download “Introduction to Social Media Measurement”

“Marketers want to measure social media in a way that is meaningful to the organization, but unfortunately most of us aren’t metrics junkies and there isn’t a silver bullet answer. This whitepaper series is about showing marketers how they can finally tie their results to financial metrics like sales, revenue, and cost. I partnered with HootSuite on this project because my analysis of their Custom Social Analytic Reports shows that it fits with the Full Frontal ROI approach, which isn’t about giving you a pretty set of social media metrics. It’s about data that will drive better decision making in your organization.” – Nichole Kelly

Are you trying to generate brand awareness at events? Do you want to make a splash at your next tradeshow? Several brands are working to incorporate social media into their event strategies read on to see what you can learn from a couple of brands that have done it exceptionally well.

Every year that I make the trek down to my beloved Austin for SXSW I’m always on the lookout for a brand that makes an impact. As an attendee we almost expect to get lots of schwag and get pitched numerous times. It’s just part of the show and I honestly welcome it when done really well. I am encouraged by brands that think outside of the box and leave a lasting impression. This year Chevy was that brand. Let’s take a look at what they did.

Chevy Provided a Needed Service

Chevy utilized a mini promotion called “Catch a Chevy” where they had several intern-esque drivers riding in marked Chevy’s that attendees could wave down to get a ride to several desired locations. This worked because attendees “needed” transportation. Two tracks of sessions were at locations that required a shuttle to get to and the shuttles didn’t leave at scheduled times so that attendees could plan their trek. Many, like me, found themselves waiting on shuttles trying not to be late for the next session. This was brilliant because Chevy is after all selling cars, they have an inventory of them that they can use at little cost, and it gave them the opportunity to get people who may not normally check them out at a dealership actually inside their cars. Now, I think they also did this last year but I didn’t notice last year. This could have been because I didn’t go to any of the sessions that weren’t in the convention center or Hilton last year.

They Trained their Drivers on Pitching the Car

Providing a service was great, but the execution on the service was brilliant. I personally, “caught a Chevy” on three occasions during the show. Each time, I was greeted by a friendly driver who asked where I was going. After figuring out my destination the driver proceeded to welcome me and tell me to send a tweet or check in on Four Square telling my friends that “I just caught a Chevy in Car 13” or whichever car number it was. On the drive, I was extremely impressed that each driver would tell me about the type of car I was riding in and the special features the car had that I might be interested in. I rode in a Chevy Cruz 3 times.

Here’s what I remember about what I was told. The Chevy Cruz gets 35 miles to the gallon and is uber eco-friendly. It even has a special plate that runs across the bottom of the car to give better aerodynamics and increase gas mileage. It has Bluetooth capability, XM, OnStar, navigation, and optional leather seats to compete with luxury vehicles. And oh, it has a much desired USB port that is lacking in my Acura.

I noticed that the cup holders were conveniently located; the car rode nice even from the back seat and even had a little sporty feel to it. I liked it!

They Extended the Experience

Before leaving the car, I was encouraged to go to the side of the convention center where I could test drive one of several cars including the new Volt.

That was it. I welcomed the pitch because they were doing me a favor and actually remembered it because they had made my experience at SXSW more pleasurable.

Last year, I was really impressed with FourSquare’s creativity. They didn’t buy a big tradeshow claiming; hey we’re the next big thing. They used some side walk chalk outside of the show and actually played FourSquare with attendees. It provided some needed enjoyment and left their brand name on the tip of people’s tongues. They also had a super cool party with Ashton Kutcher in attendance, but the lines were too long for my tastes.

What Should they Measure

So in Full Frontal ROI style, the big question is, “did Chevy make a measurable difference.” If I were them I would compare this to traditional PR, TV, and Radio metrics. This is the list I would use.

Reach and Cost Per Impression

How many people did they reach and at what cost? This should be compared against the cost per impression of their TV and Radio spots as well as their standard public relations story. They should include mentions in stories like these in addition to Twitter and Facebook mentions.

Cost Per Engagement

Did people actually engage with the brand and at what cost? This can actually be measured with an index of engagement built on a scale from actually riders in the car, to tweet mentions, to retweets generated.

Cost Per Incremental Site Visitor

Did the experience actually drive more people to Chevy’s site? Did they look at vehicle features, etc? I would argue that they should only measure the gain in site traffic rather than total site traffic for the day, but while only directional it is interesting to see what happened to site traffic and at what cost. If they wanted to try and isolate SXSW users they could try to look at referring URLs only from social media sites as that would be the likely path.

While I don’t personally have the data, I believe if Chevy looked at these metrics they would show that this was a relatively inexpensive promotion for them that generated lower costs than their traditional advertising and PR channels.

What are your thoughts? What brands stood out for you at SXSW? How would you measure the impact? Please drop a comment and share your perspective.

Other great articles about SXSW

• Chevrolet Provides Ultimate SXSW Experience (geardiary.com)
• GM at SXSW: Blending Social Media, Branding and Real Life (prnewswire.com)
• The Over-Branding Of SXSW: How Much Is Too Much? (adage.com)

What's the Difference?

Have you been wondering what’s so great about HootSuite’s new freemium model? Are you wondering if it’s worth the investment? Are you upset about having to pay for something that used to be free?

Read the full post on Social Media Examiner

Do you know how social media is helping your business? Want to find out how Twitter, Facebook and other sites are impacting your brand awareness?

The good news is social media has finally made it to the grand stage of “accountability.” A place where there are lots of people who want to measure it. The bad news is there isn’t a single clear-cut answer.

However, with a few simple steps, you can build a measurement strategy that accomplishes your goals.

Defining Terms

To start, let’s agree that brand awareness is a measure of how recognizable your brand is to your target audience. For those looking to get ahead of the curve on social media measurement, the first step is to align your social media metrics with metrics your company is already comfortable with.

Also, let’s agree that the measurements for social media aren’t all that different from how you’ve been measuring traditional media. To put brand awareness measurement into the context of the sales funnel, the key areas to evaluate fall into three categories:  social media exposure, influence and engagement.

With that understanding, let’s look at how you can level the playing field between your traditional media metrics and your social media metrics.

#1:  Measuring Social Media Exposure

How many people could you have reached with your message?

In social media, this measurement is about as reliable as a print magazine’s circulation, but knowing your potential audience does have value because it represents your potential sales lead pool.

Unfortunately, as of the writing of this post, some of these metrics have to be accounted for manually, so you’ll have to balance the level of effort to track the metrics versus the value you’ll receive from them to determine their importance to your overall strategy.

A good example of where there can be unreliability in social measurement is when isolating unique users for each of your metrics. You want to avoid counting the same person twice in the list below, but realistically it’s difficult to do.

These measurements highlight the number of people you’ve attracted to your brand through social media. To mitigate the potential for duplication of users, track growth rate as a percentage of the aggregate totals. This is where you will find the real diamonds.

Read the full post on Social Media Examiner.

There was a great reception and enthusiasm in the crowd at #IMS10 when talking about social media measurement. Here are my slides from the presentation.

Social Media Measurement by Nichole Kelly by Nichole Kelly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.slideshare.net.

Thank you so much for those who were able to join us this morning for our discussion with the Baltimore Chapter of the American Marketing Association on social media measurement. There was great discussion and lots of really thought provoking questions. The presentation is up on slide share for those who want to share it with others or for those who perhaps missed the event.

Unlike unicorns and leprechauns, social media measurement DOES exist and CAN be tracked. Nichole Kelly will bust the common myths of social media measurement and share the keys to defining metrics that truly impact your business. The discussion will focus on actionable tips to define your metrics, simple ways to apply them to bottom line results, and concrete tactics to analyze their impact on your business objectives. This will be an extremely informative discussion, followed by a Q&A segment that will turn your social media measurement strategy from legend to reality.

Please check out the AMA events section for other upcoming events!

This event was sponsored by

Do you know if social media is helping you retain your existing customers? In this article I’ll discuss 7 key metrics to measure social media’s impact on keeping customers.

The cost-effectiveness of social media has vaulted it to the top of the list of tools used to improve customer retention. But how do you measure whether social media is affecting your ability to keep customers?

To examine this, let’s look at a case study of a company that has excelled at connecting with customers in social media spaces.  Read the full article…

Social Media ROI Funnel

Are you trying to figure out how social media is impacting your bottom line? Are you already measuring but not seeing the results you had hoped for? I wrote this post for Social Media Examiner and there is a link to see the whole thing below. But I also wanted to provide you with an example of a full Social Media ROI Dashboard as it wouldn’t fit in the original post. And wait for it…wait for it…I’ve also included a link to download the excel file. So please take a look…read the article…download the dashboard and most importantly, enjoy!

One of the reasons measuring the return on investment (ROI) of social media has sparked so many discussions is because it’s not easy. The main barrier to end-to-end measurement is the lack of a true social customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

While Salesforce and others are working hard to bring a full solution to market, many marketers are simply cobbling together data they receive from web tracking solutions and social monitoring solutions.

Unfortunately, this will only give you pieces of the story. Those with proprietary CRM systems will have the toughest hurdle, which is a challenge I have personally faced. In the short-term, the only hope is to integrate tracking cookies on your site and work with a development team to integrate with your CRM.

However, you can build an effective measurement strategy if you take a holistic view to social media lead generation. Here are four tips to make sure you are measuring the full impact of social media on your bottom line.

Read the full post on Social Media Examiner

Here is an example of a Social Media ROI Dashboard.

I’ve received a lot of positive feedback about how I create dashboards for excel, so I decided that I would see how much you REALLY like them by offering a free download for a limited time,  here. Make sure to look at the 1st and 2nd tab. Sorry, you’ll have to have Excel 2007 to use it. I despise Excel 2003 and it would be useless to you anyhow. (Keep in mind that the numbers in this file are made up to demonstrate how you can measure, this would typically be linked to several sheets in order to calculate real numbers.) If you like these kind of resources, please tell me by leaving a comment and/or sharing this post. It’s a lot of work, so I’d certainly like to hear when my efforts are appreciated!  Trust me, I’m measuring your response.

Social Media ROI Dashboard

At SXSW @smexaminer sent a tweet asking for contributing authors and I responded. I submitted sample posts from my blog here and included several ideas of what I could write that would be relevent for their readers. They liked my ideas and I wrote my first post. This is just one example of the power of social media. I have to say, I think it was one of my best posts so I’d love it if you took the time to check it out.

4 Ways to Measure Social Media and It’s Impact on Your Brand

Do you know how social media is helping your business? Want to find out how Twitter, Facebook and other sites are impacting your brand awareness?

The good news is social media has finally made it to the grand stage of “accountability.” A place where there are lots of people who want to measure it. The bad news is there isn’t a single clear-cut answer.

Check out the full article on Social Media Examiner.