Social Media Metrics For Dummies

Creating Your Own Listening Dashboard

It’s important to craft a metrics dashboard for listening to your brand online. Google Analytics makes it easy for you. As I’m wrapping up this book in spring 2012, Google is rolling out a new version of its Analytics program (see Figure 6-5). As with all Google programs, you can choose which version you like better (old or new) for a long time before Google insists that you upgrade.

In previous chapters, I give instructions using the “old” interface settings. For this chapter, you use your Gmail account login and the new version of Analytics so that I can show you how to take advantage of some interesting new tools.

One thing you’ll notice right away is that both Analytics and AdWords have become more socially focused. This is no accident! Social search and engagement have begun to have more and more weight in search results and the overall Internet experience for your customer base and for you. Search engines and metrics programs have added these features to stay competitive. Previously, you could get social data only by setting up your own goals and filters for it. Google Analytics now offers some pre-set social tracking you can take advantage of.

In the following sections, you create several dashboard versions in several services and even dashboards with different focuses within Google Analytics itself.

Figure 6-5: Google AdWords and Analytics reporting using Dimensions.

Adding widgets to the Dashboard

The first thing you need to ...