A simple guide to using Google Analytics to find your most effective social networks.
Many bloggers have fallen into the trap of thinking that if they offer people more social sharing options, then more people will share their content. Well, as we’ve outlined in our previous article, The Paradox of Choice, when you give people more options, they take less action.
This is why we’ve always encouraged our users to choose only the most effective social sharing buttons for their readers. And although this might feel counter-intuitive to a lot of bloggers, all one needs to do is look at some of the most popular blogs in the world and see that they are following this exact advice:
- Neil Patel: 4 share buttons
- The Verge: 4 share buttons
- Mashable: 2 share buttons
- Lifehacker: 2 share buttons
- Gothamist: 3 share buttons
- Smashing Magazine: 2 share buttons
- CoSchedule: 4 share buttons
- Buffer: 3 share buttons
These are sites with massive amounts of traffic and lots of data to help them make intelligent decisions when it comes to getting better results.
Now, there are plenty of sites out there who offer many more share buttons, and that’s just fine for them. If your site is successful at getting people to take action across multiple different social networks, then of course do that.
However, you should always listen to your own data. And in all the cases I’ve seen, limiting the sharing options has led to an increase in sharing and higher volumes of quality traffic.
Quality being the most important word there.
So let’s walk through how you can utilize Google Analytics to find your most effective social networks in order to limit your sharing options and produce better results.
Step 1: Social Traffic Report
The first thing you want to do is determine which social networks are sending you the most traffic. To do this, go to your Google Analytics reporting and navigate to:
Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals
I recommend setting your date range for at least a year so you can see the greater scheme of things. You may have had a big influx from one network in a given month, but not in any other month. So it’s important to get a wide range to see the full picture.
In this report you’ll see a table of social networks sorted by the number of sessions you recieved from each network. This is the first thing you’ll look at.
The number of sessions and pageviews tells you how well your content has been driving traffic on that network. Understanding that every social network has a different culture, this shows you whether or not your content is the right culture fit for a given network.
Secondly, you want to look at the Average Session Duration— this is actually more important than the number of sessions being sent. This metric tells you how long a visitor from that networks stays on your site once they land there.
What you don’t want is to be getting a boat load of traffic that leaves your site after 5 seconds. That’s completely worthless traffic.
Don't optimize your website for worthless social traffic. Click To TweetWhat you want is traffic that sticks around long enough to consume your content. So if you see a network that has low Avg. Session Duration, consider it a non-sharing option.
Take note of your top 3 networks at this point. Which social networks are sending you the most session and also have a good relative Avg. Session Duration?
Now, if your #3 and #4 networks are very close in terms of sessions and have a decent Avg. Session Duration, then maybe keep them both in mind as we move on to the next step.
Step 2: Goal Conversions
Now, here’s where the rubber meets the road. Sure, a social network may be sending you traffic and maybe that traffic is even sticking around long enough to consume your content.
Is that traffic converting? Is it growing your email list? Are these sessions leading to sales? Are they sharing your content and growing your reach?
This is how we separate the petty fluff from the important stuff.
First and foremost— you do have Google Analytics Goals set up, right? If not, here’s an article that can walk you through it.
If you have not had them set up until this point, skip to the Total Events section as the following wont be very useful for you.
Since there’s not an easy way to navigate to a report which will show you all we need to evaluate here, I’ve gone ahead and created a Google Analytics Dashboard template that you can apply in a few clicks to get the data we’re going to be looking at here.
Just enter your name and email below and I’ll email you this Dashboard template plus one other that will help you determine the ROI of your social media efforts.
Once you’ve applied this Dashboard template you will see the following widgets active:
- Sessions by Social Network
- Sessions and Average Session Duration by Social Network
- Sessions and Goal Completions by Social Network
- Sessions and Goal Conversion Rate by Social Network
- Sessions and Total Events by Social Network
Since we’ve already covered the first two, we’re now going to focus on the latter three.
Goal Completions and Conversion Rate
The reason you want to evaluate these two metrics is because you may be getting a high number of conversions, but it’s taking you far more sessions to accomplish it.
For example, if you got 100 conversions from Facebook but it took you 10,000 sessions to accomplish that (1% conversion rate), it may not be as valuable a network if you got 50 conversions out of 500 sessions from Twitter (10% conversion rate).
In other words, it may just be easier to drive more traffic from the networks that are giving you higher conversion rates. In the example above, gaining 100 more sessions from Twitter would yield 10 more conversions as opposed to 100 more sessions from Facebook yielding 1 conversion.
In the same vein, if you lost 1,000 visits a month from Facebook that means you’d lose an average of 10 conversions. But to make it up with your Twitter traffic you would only need to get 100 more sessions to make up for the loss.
Are you tracking with me here? Or is that too much math?
Bottom line is, don’t let the sheer volume of sessions or conversions be the sole deciding factors. Take into account the conversion rates each network is yielding.
Don't just look at how many sessions a social network sends you, consider the conversions it brings.Click To TweetTotal Events by Social Network
If you’ve been taking advantage of Social Warfare’s Button Click Tracking feature, you’ll be able to utilize this final metric. If there’s anything that comes close to the importance of conversions, it’s the importance of whether or not sessions are leading to more shares of your content.
In order to scale your efforts beyond your own personal action, you need people to be sharing your content for you. Word of mouth advertizing is 1,000 times better than paid advertising. So you want to be sure that the sessions that are coming in are leading to shares going out—which in turn leads to more sessions coming in.
So I’ve also created the final widget to show you which social networks’ sessions are driving the most share events.
All Things Considered
Let’s take a quick recap of all the data points to consider when evaluating which social sharing buttons to offer:
- How many sessions are each social network sending?
- What is the average duration of those sessions?
- How many conversions are coming as a result of each social network?
- What is the conversion rate of each network?
With all the previous data points considered, you can then make the most educated choice about which social sharing buttons will be the most effective on your site. Our highest recommendation is to limit the options to four buttons or fewer.
If you are a social network rock star like Peg Fitzpatrick or Rebekah Radice and can manage to get high share numbers on 5-6 networks— then maybe offer that many options.
However, my challenge to you is this— test limiting your share button options and track your results. Do a 30-day experiment and see what happens if you only offer 3 share buttons. If you’re up for this challenge and track your results, we’d love to hear about it and maybe even highlight your results on our blog!
All you would need to do is benchmark where your stats are at currently and after 30-days look at how they’ve changed. Then you’ll be able to clearly see how this change has impacted your site, whether positively or negatively.
Using this level of data intelligence, you can offer your visitors the most optimal sharing options that will yield, for you, the most valuable results.
nice post. I am planning to buy this plugin
Thanks for sharing. It helps a lot in getting social shares directly from the blog.
After checking from our Google Analytics report, we have finally kept only the 2 social sharing buttons -Facebook and Twitter seeing the trend of sharing from our users in last 1 year. It worked. Less clutter, better and simpler. Nice write up. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing that Debajyoti! Always great to hear what other people’s results have been.
You have told about the social share button. You have a great plugin for it. Thanks
Nice post. Thanks for sharing this informative post with everyone.
Thanks! I added it to My Blog 🙂
Hey Dustin W. Stout,
That’s really a helpful article. thanks for sharing.
Nice Post. Thanks for sharing the information ????
Social share button has created more engagement in my site.
Great plugin, we must use it
Thanks for such a great content. You have really such a nice information here.
Wow, good advice Dustin. I know that choice paradox is crucial hence I have already limited it to 4. Next thing to do is to check if I have chosen the right 4. This article will help. Thanks
Just experimenting with my buttons, gone through my Google Analytics and worked out from those my best options, also set the count to not show under a certain amount, looks better when articles are a bit low on the social media shares. Will give everything test run for 30 days and see how it goes. Many thanks for the advance. Loving the Pro version, very handy.
Awesome Karen! So glad you found this article helpful!
This is really an awesome plugin thanks for sharing this.
Hi Dustin. I have a personal blog and I think the floating share buttons on the bottom (especially on mobile view) is very obstructive. Do you have any other placement suggestion?
Thanks
Well if you prefer not to have them floating, you can turn the floating off. You could just have the static Above and Below content buttons, if that feels less obstructive. At the end of the day, do what makes you feel best about your site. We can talk about what works based on stats all day long, but if it doesn’t feel right to you (and you KNOW your audience) then don’t do it. 😀
Hi,
I have been using warfare plugin for 2 weeks, it does make my website load faster and I am contented with it. Showing only 4 buttons is a good idea but can we just have another new button to allow people share to those medias (other than those 4) that are not shown?
You can add as many share options as you like–the plugin doesn’t limit you only to 4, that’s just our recommendation.
not really advisable to add more as view in mobile they will be just a thin line. therefore its good to have a button that allow people to chose those not shown. many of the other plugins have this function
this article and the dashboards are really helpful – thank you! i had no idea that facebook was performing so well for me.
You’re welcome Kate!
Hey Dustin,
Indeed a Great Post.
I am big lover of social media as I love market my content on sites like Facebook & Twitter. Also majority readers of my blog use FB and Twiter buttons on most occasions, so I believe keeping button counts to 3 or 4, as I can add Google Plus button and Tumblr button.
But apart from these, I will not add any, because it can slow down the page considerably.
Anyways, your article is interesting Dustin.
~ Jenny
This is really an awesome plugin
I prefer the principle : less is more, so basically it is : facebook and twitter, but if You have website ex. portfolio, photographer good to show also od instead twitter : pinterest, behance or maybe instagram.
Wow, good advice Dustin. I know that choice paradox is crucial hence I have already limited it to 4. Next thing to do is to check if I have chosen the right 4. This article will help. Thanks
Keep sharing 🙂
Hi! Social sharing buttons, especially facebook & twitter are increasing my website loading time. How do I solve this problem?
Are you using Social Warfare?
Hey dustin. It’s really awesome man.When ever i came to your site always i get learn something new.The social sharing button article is very informative i must say.Recently i launched my new blog site but which social share button plugin is good for my site i don’t know.I was little bit confused but after read this i will use one of those plug-ins and hope i will get the good results.
I had checked more then 10 plugins for social sharing and found social warfare plugin to be number one. Now, I am using this plugin from past 6 months and found great results.
Thanks Shivang! We’re glad you found Social Warfare!
This is really an awesome plugin. It has done wonders for as my rankings have improved significantly due to increased social shares. Thankyou for this.
Thank you for taking the time to let us know Sneha!
Just bought the plugin today! Really excited to see how it performs on our blog. We already noticed few share within few hours! I wish Social Warfare is gonna sky rocket our social traffic. 😀
Hi Dustin, thanks a lot for this article. It comes back to the old saying of less is more. More focus on what works and then the ROI is usually much better!
Very true! Despite the “less is more” being an overused cliche, there’s a LOT of truth in it.
Thanks. You really need to provide a chart or some way of identifying the social buttons. Otherwise, the only way to do so is to install them then see what they are. Also, the top sites Google Analytics shows me are YouTube, WordPress, Blogger, and reddit. I guess you can’t share to any of those, right? I don’t see buttons for them. Thanks.
Hi Rick! Do you mean a chart for which social buttons our plugin, Social Warfare offers? If so, they’re all shown on our homepage (second section, on the right). There is also a list in this Support article: https://warfareplugins.com/support/what-social-networks-are-supported/
Wow, good advice Dustin. I know that choice paradox is crucial hence I have already limited it to 4. Next thing to do is to check if I have chosen the right 4. This article will help. Thanks
Using the SWP and loving it. A few recommendations and features requests, is there any mechanism to pass it on to the development team?
Glad you liked it Ahmad! Would love to hear what your results are.
For any feedback, requests or ideas, just use our contact page.