By Cary Lenore Walski, Technology Education and Outreach Coordinator, MAP TechWorks

A twit in the dark.

When you think of the concept of the “social” website, Google Analytics -- the numbers nerd quietly tabulating traffic in the background on your site -- doesn’t immediately leap to mind.

Unintuitive as it may be, configuring your analytics to shed light on your performance is a key step ensuring that the time you’re investing in social mediums is actually creating positive results for you. Not only that, having your analytics hat on can inspire you to think creatively about how to use social media to connect with people in new, more engaging ways.

And Google said, “Let there be light.”

In this silent screencast, I show you how to use Advanced Segments to zero-in on referral traffic coming from social media services that have set web addresses.

Now that you know how to get the data, here’s one example of how to use it.

For this example, let’s define your communications goal as “using social media to effectively engage people new to our organization.” With that goal in mind, let’s see how we can find corresponding measurements in Google Analytics.

Ask yourself how you might define “effective engagement” in terms of the numbers in your Analytics dashboard. In this case engagement might mean measuring:

1. Time spent on site (more = better)
2. Bounce rate, (e.g., how many people visited only one page on your site, smaller percentage = better)

Because this goal is about engaging people who have never heard of your nonprofit organization, we’ll focus only on those who are marked as “New Visitors”. So, using your Advanced Segment for Facebook, you can report every month on the number of New Visitors that are coming from Facebook, and record the Average Time on Site and the Bounce Rate.

Experiment, Rinse, Repeat

Now comes the fun part: create tactics to improve on your goal performance, and experiment to see if you can move the needle on your numbers. For instance, you might:

1. Use video to engage people with your web content, thereby increasing the time spent on site.
2. Post on Facebook more about information on your own website. Instead of sharing as many news articles related to your mission that are posted on other websites, write a short article or blog entry on your own site commenting about the news of the day and refer more traffic to yourself.

The Gift of the Analytics Mindset in a Social World

Ultimately, the most powerful aspect of analytics is not the numbers, but the focus and creative insight that having an analytics mindset gives you when you make decisions about how you’re using social media on your website, and beyond.

Special Bonus Question

Why is Advanced Segments not the best way to measure your incoming traffic from Twitter? Leave your response in the comments below. First correct respondent will receive an amazing animated GIF from yours truly.

A recent hire at MAP for Nonprofits, Cary is responsible for creating programming and multimedia tools to help nonprofits unleash mission through the effective use of technology. A graduate of Macalester College, Cary has been building websites and helping nonprofits and businesses create positive online experiences for the past six years.