Google Analytics Assisted Social Media conversions
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:24 am
Determining the ROI of social media is always a topic of discussion. How do you measure the time and money you spend on this? Measuring new likes or followers is an easy way out. Does that justify your social media policy sufficiently? In this (extensive) article I describe which KPIs you can define to measure the results of your social media efforts in a relevant way. And why you should measure at all.
Insight is progress
What is the trigger for measuring your social media activities? There are many possible answers to that. For example, giving account of your efforts to management. Or creating insight for a successful follow-up campaign. And secretly it also gives a nice feeling when you can admire the success of your work, right?
Four macro goals
All social media objectives you can think of are linked to one of four macro objectives, namely:
Exposure (visibility or branding)
Engagement (participation, involvement)
Influence (influence, virality)
Action (action, conversion)
Four-phase model social media objectives
As you can see in the diagram above, the actions or conversions in the last step are essential. They will ultimately create a financial impact and the real social media ROI .
The best social media KPIs
Okay, let's go. The list of metrics to measure social media efforts is inexhaustible. The KPIs mentioned in this article are therefore subject to change. Nevertheless, I will attempt to list KPIs that are directly applicable or give rise to another (even better) indicator .
1. Facebook Interactions: IPM & IPM+
A metric that is very well-known in Facebook circles is the IPM score (Interactions per mille , number of interactions per thousand fans). Facebook values your page , among other things, on the average interaction per status update that you post. The IPM+ calculation ranks Facebook pages on these interactions. The formula that goes with this is as follows:
Calculation KPI IPM+
If you have a total of 500 comments, likes or shares on 20 posts (an average of 25 interactions per post), your IPM+ will depend on the number of fans. With 25 fans, you have an IPM+ of 1, but if you achieve the same number of interactions with 10 fans, your score will increase to 2.5. The higher your IPM+ score, the better. For yourself, for Facebook, and for this ranking . This score is public and there are several websites that calculate it. A great application of this metric is as a competitor analysis. On Conversocial you can calculate the IPM score (note: with the exception of the shares , which are included in the IPM+ calculation).
Conversocial Facebook Page Profiler
Compare your own Facebook page with those of two competitors.
Also check out this blog about measuring your Facebook pages and comparing them to your competitors.
2. Assisted social media conversions
Goals on your website are essential. If you also measure these via set goals within your Google Analytics account, you will learn more about who achieved these goals: for example, who fills out a contact form, downloads a brochure, requests a quote or orders a product. And where these people come from. For example, from a search engine, via another website or directly via the browser.
However, Google did not think it was right that the last source consulted (be it a search engine, AdWords advertisement or a referring website) always received the credit for achieving the goal. Assisted Conversions was therefore introduced at the end of 2011. These assisted conversions are sources that did not directly contribute to achieving a goal, but were used by the visitor. Consider it an assist in various sports such as football and basketball: the player who gives the pass or cross does not get a goal thailand mobile phone number list behind his or her name, but is involved in scoring the point.
Social media does not always directly deliver a goal achieved, but is often the indicator. So rather look at the number of assists than the goals when it comes to visitors who came to your website via social media channels.
The Social Network source is more of an assisted conversion here than the Referral source. The Paid Search source is more of an assisted conversion than a direct conversion.
The number in the column 'Assisting/last click or direct conversions ' is an important indication of whether a source is more assist (higher than 1.0) or the last interaction before reaching the goal (lower than 1.0). Google has used this metric as an important basis for the online Customer Journey in this visual explanation . If you do not want to use this metric as a snapshot, but constantly and consistently, it is wise to include the variable 'time': how does the key figure develop over time? Also compare it with other sources to get a clear picture of how they relate to each other. Or look at the social media channels among themselves.
Conversions by Social Media
In the Analytics report Traffic Sources > Social > Analytics you will find the conversions per social network.
Insight is progress
What is the trigger for measuring your social media activities? There are many possible answers to that. For example, giving account of your efforts to management. Or creating insight for a successful follow-up campaign. And secretly it also gives a nice feeling when you can admire the success of your work, right?
Four macro goals
All social media objectives you can think of are linked to one of four macro objectives, namely:
Exposure (visibility or branding)
Engagement (participation, involvement)
Influence (influence, virality)
Action (action, conversion)
Four-phase model social media objectives
As you can see in the diagram above, the actions or conversions in the last step are essential. They will ultimately create a financial impact and the real social media ROI .
The best social media KPIs
Okay, let's go. The list of metrics to measure social media efforts is inexhaustible. The KPIs mentioned in this article are therefore subject to change. Nevertheless, I will attempt to list KPIs that are directly applicable or give rise to another (even better) indicator .
1. Facebook Interactions: IPM & IPM+
A metric that is very well-known in Facebook circles is the IPM score (Interactions per mille , number of interactions per thousand fans). Facebook values your page , among other things, on the average interaction per status update that you post. The IPM+ calculation ranks Facebook pages on these interactions. The formula that goes with this is as follows:
Calculation KPI IPM+
If you have a total of 500 comments, likes or shares on 20 posts (an average of 25 interactions per post), your IPM+ will depend on the number of fans. With 25 fans, you have an IPM+ of 1, but if you achieve the same number of interactions with 10 fans, your score will increase to 2.5. The higher your IPM+ score, the better. For yourself, for Facebook, and for this ranking . This score is public and there are several websites that calculate it. A great application of this metric is as a competitor analysis. On Conversocial you can calculate the IPM score (note: with the exception of the shares , which are included in the IPM+ calculation).
Conversocial Facebook Page Profiler
Compare your own Facebook page with those of two competitors.
Also check out this blog about measuring your Facebook pages and comparing them to your competitors.
2. Assisted social media conversions
Goals on your website are essential. If you also measure these via set goals within your Google Analytics account, you will learn more about who achieved these goals: for example, who fills out a contact form, downloads a brochure, requests a quote or orders a product. And where these people come from. For example, from a search engine, via another website or directly via the browser.
However, Google did not think it was right that the last source consulted (be it a search engine, AdWords advertisement or a referring website) always received the credit for achieving the goal. Assisted Conversions was therefore introduced at the end of 2011. These assisted conversions are sources that did not directly contribute to achieving a goal, but were used by the visitor. Consider it an assist in various sports such as football and basketball: the player who gives the pass or cross does not get a goal thailand mobile phone number list behind his or her name, but is involved in scoring the point.
Social media does not always directly deliver a goal achieved, but is often the indicator. So rather look at the number of assists than the goals when it comes to visitors who came to your website via social media channels.
The Social Network source is more of an assisted conversion here than the Referral source. The Paid Search source is more of an assisted conversion than a direct conversion.
The number in the column 'Assisting/last click or direct conversions ' is an important indication of whether a source is more assist (higher than 1.0) or the last interaction before reaching the goal (lower than 1.0). Google has used this metric as an important basis for the online Customer Journey in this visual explanation . If you do not want to use this metric as a snapshot, but constantly and consistently, it is wise to include the variable 'time': how does the key figure develop over time? Also compare it with other sources to get a clear picture of how they relate to each other. Or look at the social media channels among themselves.
Conversions by Social Media
In the Analytics report Traffic Sources > Social > Analytics you will find the conversions per social network.