Social Referrers and Links

© 2011 WEBTRENDS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.@webtrends #wtengage

Social Referrers & LinksJune Dershewitz


• VP Analytics at Semphonic• Web Analytics Association Board Member• Experience: 12 yrs in web analytics, 6 yrs as Webtrends user• Webtrends Certified Professional, 2010

• Semphonic is a leading web analytics consultancy• Based in SF, with offices in Boston, NYC, DC and Portland• Clients include American Express, Charles Schwab, Genentech,

Intuit, Kohler, NCI, Nokia, Turner Broadcasting and many other top U.S. and global companies

• Learn more: www.semphonic.com

Hi, I’m June Dershewitz


About This Workshop

I’ll cover two practical ways to track social media traffic on your own site using Webtrends Analytics:

Part 1: Social Referrers

Referring domains, traffic sources and why some social traffic is direct

Part 2: Social Campaigns

How to tag, shrink, share and analyze social media campaign links


Part 1: Social Referrers


Social Referrers: Domain-Level Reporting

Use the Referring Domains report as a starting point for understanding social media traffic to your site - no configuration needed


Social Referrers: Traffic Source Reporting

•The current version of Analytics (both On Demand and On Premises) includes a new dimension called Traffic Source, with these values:

• Paid Search• Organic Search• Campaigns• Direct Traffic• Other Referrers• And custom values passed by you using WT.tsrc (e.g. Social Media)

•Another approach: create a custom report using a lookup table for Traffic Source and key it off of Referring Domain


Social Referrers: Reasons for Direct Traffic

There are many, many reasons for direct traffic, including:

1. Somebody really did type in the address or used a bookmark to get to your page

2. They clicked on a link in an email (not always true. If they used some kind of web mail, the web mail server will be the referrer)

3. The link was in a document

4. The link originates at a secure (https:) page and your page is not secure (http)

5. Spiders and bots may be programmed to suppress the referrer information (this one mostly applies to server logs, rarely to SDC)

… etc. etc. etc.

Source: Webtrends Outsider blog, 2008


Social Referrers: Some Social Traffic is Direct

•Social activity originating from mobile apps will be direct•Example: Facebook Mobile App

your web site

Stats:•There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. •People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

Source: Facebook PR

direct


Social Referrers: Some Social Traffic is Direct

•Social desktop app to browser pass-throughs will be direct •Example: TweetDeck

your web site

direct


Social Referrers: URL Shorteners & Direct Traffic

•Do URL shorteners show up as the true source, the shortener, or direct in site analytics? No guarantee. Test to be sure.

•Bit.ly reports breakdown by referrer. Some clicks will show up as true source in site analytics, others show up as direct.


Social Referrers: Conclusion

•Some socially-sourced traffic appears within Referring Domains•Other social activity winds up as Direct Traffic•If you want to be certain of social sourcing, use Campaigns


Part 2: Social Campaigns


Social Campaigns

Why do it?• Ability to tie social media activity to site goals• Measure different variations or placements of social links, and

compare to other marketing channels• So you can say, “Here’s a Twitter campaign we ran last month

that generated $23,000 in revenue.”

How to do it?

1. Tag: apply campaign codes to URLs

2. Shrink: pass URLs through a link shortener

3. Post: deploy short links on social sites

4. Analyze: match campaigns with goal behaviors


Social Campaigns: Step 1 of 4: Tag

Before:

http://www.domain.com/dir/page.html

After:

http://www.domain.com/dir/page.html?WT.mc_id=SocialCampaign1

Tips•Follow your company’s campaign coding standards, if an established policy exists•Treat social media just like traditional channels such as email•If you’re going to post a link on multiple social sites, create one campaign code per site. So: one for Facebook, one for LinkedIn, etc.


Social Campaigns: Step 2 of 4: Shrink

Use bit.ly or another link shortener

You can track basic stats at this step


Social Campaigns: Step 3 of 4: Post

Once you have a set of tagged short links, go out and post them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Process•Some companies build simple tools from scratch that allow them to automate tagging and shrinking their URLs, they then grab the links and post them manually•Using Hootsuite (or similar) you can tag, shrink and post within a single interface, since campaign coding and URL shortening are built directly into the tool•The choice is up to you; just find a process your team can live with


Social Campaigns: Shortcuts

Combine Steps 1-3 (tag/shorten/post) using HootSuite Pro


Social Campaigns: Step 4 of 4: Analyze

View your Campaign reports in Webtrends Analytics

For better reporting, put social campaign metadata in your campaigns.csv translation file


Social Campaigns: Step 4 of 4: Analyze

Why not just use URL shortener stats? •Since URL shorteners like bit.ly provide stats, some people may question whether it’s necessary to append campaign codes at all

•Bit.ly tracks clicks but it does not tie to downstream goal behaviors •To connect social media efforts to outcomes, you must track links as campaigns

•Don’t try to reconcile bit.ly vs. site data - there are broad differences


Questions?


Thank you!

June Dershewitz

[email protected]

http://june.typepad.com

@jdersh

mailto:[email protected]

http://june.typepad.com/

Social Referrers and Links

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