Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1: Delving into Data

In This Chapter

• Understanding the difference between monitoring and measuring
• Setting up your measurement plan
• Selecting analytics packages that meet your marketing objectives
• Learning to use Google Analytics
• Discovering Google Social Analytics

Web analytics is the practice of analyzing performance and business statistics for a website, social media marketing, and other online marketing efforts to better understand user behavior and improve results. Some might call web analytics more art than science; to others, it's black magic.

The amount of data that can be acquired from online marketing efforts vastly exceeds the amount available using traditional offline methods. That statement alone makes online marketing, including social media, an attractive form of public relations and advertising.

In the best of all possible worlds, the results of your marketing efforts should appear as increased profits — in other words, as an improved bottom line with a nice return on investment (ROI). You're more likely to achieve this goal if you make analytics part of a process of continuous quality improvement.

Before getting mired in the swamp of online marketing data, assess the performance of your hub website. If you aren't making a profit from that core investment, it doesn't matter whether you fill the conversion funnel (see Book I, Chapter 1) with fantastic traffic ...