If you still aren’t a believer now…Social media and all aspects of social have made an evident presence in the eyes of Google…and what Google says usually goes. Social tracking mechanisms have been implemented and are growing increasingly important in the collection of relevant site metrics. Google Analytics’ new social interaction tracking allows you to track Facebook likes, unlikes and shares from social plug-ins on your website, and you can enable these measurements by adding tracking code to your site.
Google Analytics allows users to see how site behavior changes as a user interacts with a social plug-in. The total number of social actions taken are recorded in addition to a report comparing the pages with the highest number of social actions.
These new updates to Google Analytics have also added the ability to track Tweets about specific URLs on your website. This tracking records social actions on your website from the Tweet button in a similar way to how Facebook and +1 social actions are measured.
These capabilities have major potential for marketers, for it allows marketers to gain much deeper insight into the motivations, social networking, buying patterns and preferences of their customers. With this information marketers are much more equipped to directly target their customers in a way that is best suited to their wants and needs.