How to Use GA4 to Track Social Media Traffic: 6 Questions, Answers and Insights [VIDEO]

Social media marketing is hard work.

It takes a lot of time and energy. Connect and share. Listen and engage. Publish and promote. Be consistent.

Usually the list of social media marketing goals includes “brand awareness” and “drive website traffic.” But how well is it working? Which social media channels are bringing in visitors? What are they doing? As soon as you start sharing content on social media, you start asking:

“How do I track social media in Google Analytics?”

Of course, you have all kinds of social media data right in front of you. There are likes, shares, comments and followers. It’s a data-rich channel with tons of metrics. But some of these are the least useful marketing metrics. They don’t necessarily translate into website traffic or engagement.

This post shows the step-by-step process for answering each of these questions using GA4.

• How much traffic comes from social media?
• How does social media traffic compare to other traffic sources?
• Which specific social media channels send the most traffic? The best traffic?
• Which articles get the most traffic from social media?
• Which social media campaigns attract and convert visitors?
• How is paid social traffic different from organic social traffic?
• How is social traffic different for mobile and desktop visitors?

How much social media traffic are we getting?
How does social media traffic compare to other traffic sources?

Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report, set to “Session primary channel groups”

We’ll start with two big questions. They’re easy to answer and the insights are good. Here’s how to see the top-line traffic from social media, relative to your other traffic sources, using some of the most useful metrics in Analytics.

We’ll use the Traffic acquisition report, where “Organic social” is one of the “Session primary channel groups.” Along with Direct, Organic Search, Referral and Email, it’s one of the big buckets.

• From the Reports section go to Acquisition > Traffic acquisition

Now let’s customize the report to show the most useful metrics on the right. You’ll need “Editor” or “Administrator” level access.

• Click the pencil icon in the top right to Customize the report. Some options will slide in from the right.
• Click on “Metrics >” and select your favorite metrics, or use my recommendations: Sessions, Engagement rate, Average engagement time per session, Session Key event rate and Key events. That’s it.I think those are the best. They represent the top, middle and bottom of the funnel. I’ll come back to those throughout this post. The default metrics are not very good. Revenue? Do they think we’re all ecommerce companies?Here’s what the customization looks like.

• Click “Apply” in the bottom right
• Save (Save changes to current report), then hit “← Back” in the top left to go back to the newly customized report

Now you are measuring social media traffic, engagement and conversions. You can see how it compares with the other traffic sources.

• How much traffic are we attracting from social media? (users, sessions)
• How engaged are visitors from social media? (engagement rate, avg engagement time)
• How likely are social media visitors to take action? (session conversion rate, conversions)

Scroll to the right to see conversions (“key events”) and you can select any of your goals from the drop down.

It looks like over the last three months, I can credit social media with 142 email subscribers but just seven contact form submissions. That’s attribution. Connecting traffic sources to conversions. Keep in mind that GA4 underreports everything.

Don’t be surprised if…

1. Conversion rates for visitors from social media are lower than those of the other traffic sources. Social media visitors tend to have lower intent than search or direct traffic visitors.
2. The numbers may be very low. Especially Instagram traffic. Set a bigger date range to see more data. Beware of seasonality and changes in marketing activity.

Related: Here’s our guide to website traffic sources if you want the detailed (sometimes surprising) definition of all 18 Default Channel Groups in GA4.

Which social channels send us the most traffic? The best traffic?

Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report, set to “source” and filtered for social.

Do this from the same report. Just change the dimension in the dropdown above the first column. Switch it from “Default channel group” to “Session source.” Then you can create a filter to show just traffic from the “social” medium.

Here’s the full process:

• From the Reports section go to Acquisition > Traffic acquisition
• Click the pencil icon in the top right to Customize the report. Some options will slide in from the right.
• Click on “Metrics >” and select your favorite metrics, or use my recommendations: Users, Sessions, Engagement rate, Session conversion rate, Average engagement time per session, Event count and Conversions. (see the screenshot above)
• Click “Apply” in the bottom right
• Save (Save changes to current report), then hit “← Back” in the top left to go back to the newly customized report
• In the dropdown above the first column, change the dimension from “Default channel group” to “Source”
• Click “Add filter +” and set the filter to include traffic when the “Session medium” is “social”

Now you’re looking at a list of social traffic sources, including social media networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and campaigns tagged as social. It’s easy to compare these social traffic sources at a glance.

• Which are attracting more visitors? Notice how some attract a lot more traffic than others.
• Which are attracting more engaged visitors? Notice how some have higher engagement and conversion rates than others?

Quick reminder: Engagement rate is the percentage of visits that were “engaged sessions.” An engaged session is a visit that lasted 10+ seconds, touched 2+ pages or recorded a conversion. 👈 Marketers should know this definition by heart.

Don’t be surprised if…

1. Marketing trends are affecting this dramatically. Twitter down? LinkedIn up?
2. You see surprise traffic from social networks where you aren’t even active. Those networks may not be part of your strategy, but they still contain links to your site.

Which articles get the most traffic from social media?

Engagement > Pages and screens report, set to “Page path” and filtered for social.

We covered this in our Content Marketing Audit for GA4, which shows how to measure content performance in all three of the main channels: SEO, social media and email marketing. Let’s review the process for measuring content marketing performance in social media using GA4.

Because we’re looking at specific pages, we’ll use an Engagement report rather than an Acquisition report.

“Page path” is the GA4 secret code word for URL

• Go to the Engagement > Page path + Query string report
• Click the “Add Filter +” so we can see just the social traffic
• As above, set the filter to show when the “Session medium” exactly matches “social”
• Click Apply

• Type “blog” into the search box to see just the URLs from that directory.

Analyze those top performers, looking closely at the headlines, formatting and visuals. What do they have in common?

Don’t be surprised if…

1. Some articles do much better in social media than others. In the example above, it’s immediately clear that articles with lots of visuals had the best social media performance.
2. Articles that weren’t on your radar are suddenly doing well. All it takes is for one influencer to post one link and you may see a spike in traffic.

Which social media campaigns attract and convert visitors?

Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report, set to “Session campaign”

Some marketing efforts are worth tracking separately. For example:

• Traffic from a paid social campaign (Facebook ads, sponsored posts, etc.)
• Traffic from a social media video
• Traffic from a collaboration with an influencer

In GA4, a campaign visit is any visit from any link that has campaign tracking code, which are those little UTM parameters at the end of links. Those parameters are added using a Campaign URL Builder.

Tracking campaigns with UTM codes is a fundamental digital marketing skill. If you haven’t done this before, check out the step-by-step process at the end of this article.

When GA4 sees these in the link, it attributes the session to that campaign. This lets you see which specific actions led to which specific outcomes.

Without campaign tracking codes, GA4 will do its best, but it won’t know which specific campaigns had what kinds of traffic, engagement rates and key event rates. So tag the links in your social campaigns (and email campaigns and ad campaigns)

Here’s how to see the performance of your social media marketing campaigns, paid and organic:

• Go to the Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report
• Customize the report if you’d like, using the recommended metrics: sessions, engagement rate, key event rate, etc. (as above)
• In the dropdown above the first column, change the dimension from “Session primary channel group” to “Session campaign”
• Click the “Add Filter +”
• Set the filter settings to: Session medium exactly matches social (as above)

Don’t be surprised if…

1. The lifespan of that link is longer than expected. A single social post can drive traffic for a week or more, with expanded reach and life for each social share.
2. Conversion rates are zero? It’s hard to get visitors (especially visitors from social media) to take action. When traffic is there but conversion rates are low, make harder working calls to action.

How do organic social and paid social compare?

Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report, set to “Session primary channel groups”

GA4 has two separate channel groups for social: organic social and paid social. You can see the difference in performance for these channels in just a few clicks.

• From the Reports section go to Acquisition > Traffic acquisition (we already customized this report to show just our favorite metrics)
• Type “social” into the search box above the first column

That’s it! Three clicks and few keystrokes. You’ll immediately see how they stack up.

In this account, a lot of money is spent on paid social ads, but the only outcome is awareness. Those visitors aren’t taking action on the website.

To better understand this traffic, we can drill down a bit further. Filter to only show paid social media, and then click the blue plus to add a “secondary dimension.” Add “Page path” and you can see which pages the visitors land on.

Pro Tip: If you’re buying traffic to a page with ultra-low engagement, reconsider the ad spend or the ad creative. Or try this GA4 report that shows your worst performing ads.

Don’t be surprised if…

1. Engagement for paid social is relatively low. These are low-intent visitors who tapped on an ad while browsing through a social stream.

We asked a friend and social media marketing expert, Anne Popolizio, for her input on the differences between paid social and organic social traffic sources.

Anne Popolizio, Social Squib “As the data about shows, paid social will drive vastly more traffic and the engagement rate will be lower than organic traffic. The reason for this discrepancy comes down to the audience’s relationship with you. Organic social’s primary job is nurture. Organic is where you can have a meaningful, relationship-building conversation over time. On platforms like Instagram and TikTok, it’s very difficult to go from a piece of organic content to a website. Your audience has to jump through a few hoops. So someone who makes it to your website from organic social is 1. extremely warm and 2. really determined. Paid social, on the other hand, is your strongest audience-growth tool. It’s the most effective marketing tool for building retargetable audiences and doing top-of-funnel conversion, like email list growth. But because this audience doesn’t know you, they are likely to not spend 2:50 seconds on your site. That comes 12 touches later. Next, we’ll go deeper into the differences between paid social and organic social by adding mobile vs. desktop data, answering an even more interesting question…”

Next, we’ll go deeper into the differences between paid social and organic social by adding mobile vs. desktop data, answering an even more interesting question…

How is social traffic different for mobile and desktop visitors?

Blank Exploration with “Default channel group” as the rows. “Sessions” “Engagement rate” and “key event rate” as the values. “Device category” as the columns.

For this, we’ll use a GA4 Exploration, which is a custom saved report that you can come back to easily anytime. We’ll build it from scratch, using dimensions and metrics as our rows, values and columns.

• Click on “Explorations” and select “Blank”
• In the first column, click the plus sign next to DIMENSIONS and then search for and select these two: “Session source / medium” and “Device category.”
• Next click the plus sign next to METRICS and then search for and select these three: “Sessions” “Engagement rate” and “Session key event rate”
• Drag the “Session source / medium” dimension into the ROWS box in the Settings column
• Drag the “Device category” dimension into the COLUMNS box.
• Drag your three metrics into the VALUES box.

To clean up the report you can right click on any of the rows and “exclude selection” removing it from the report. Or add filters at the bottom of the Settings column. Here I’ve filtered to just show the data when “paid” is in the session source / medium.

The insights are obvious. In this account, paid social visitors almost never convert if they are on a phone. But 1.3% of them convert if they’re on a desktop. To understand this better, you could add the landing page as another row. Then you’ll see three dimensions: the source, the page and the device. 3D analytics! That’s where the insights are.

Don’t be surprised if…

1. Your co-workers are amazed by the insights you bring to your next marketing meeting.

The best social media marketers know Analytics

Social media marketing is challenging.

It takes strategic focus. It takes consistency. It takes empathy and hard work. Ask any social media manager. So we need to measure the impact of those efforts. And make sure to go beyond the basic social media metrics.

Measuring social media marketing is also challenging.

It takes a bit of skill to get to the insights in GA4. Even then, when everything is tracking properly, your data won’t be 100% accurate.

The goal is to get good enough data to make good marketing decisions. That is definitely possible, even when tracking a tricky, diverse source of traffic like social media in a new tool like GA4. Run the reports, export to a Google Sheet and review your social media strategy.

With these methods, there is no need for fancy event tracking or Google Tag Manager setup.

And remember, there’s more to social media than dumping links into social streams. Social networks are for networking, listening, building real relationships and making friends.

The best social media outcomes aren’t in your Analytics.

Let’s close with a few thoughts from Brooke Sellas, a social media customer service pro, who knows that social is more than a content promotion platform.

Brooke Sellas, B Squared Media “Brand conversation is critical for conversions on social media — shoppers on social weight brand conversations are as high or higher than online reviews. And all the social media algorithms weigh conversations heavily, too. Commenting as your brand gives you exposure, shows that you’re listening, builds connections, and has one of the highest ROIs on social media!“

BONUS! How to do social media tracking using a URL builder and campaign tracking code

Social media campaigns can and should be tracked with campaign tracking code. Without it, some visitors will be categorized as direct traffic, others will be tracked as referral traffic. It’s a problem.

Campaign tracking code is that bit of info you can add to the end of any link to your website. When the visitor clicks that link and lands on your page, this code is in the address bar. Google Analytics sees it there and attributes that visitor to that campaign.

This code is very easy to add. It takes less than a minute. It can be added using any of the free “URL builders” on the web. There are many, but we’ve built our own:

Click here to see Orbit’s own URL Builder >

Ours is a little easier than most. It forces lower-case so you don’t have to worry about it.

Here’s how to use a URL builder to add campaign tracking code to track your social media performance for any social media marketing campaign.

Step 1. Enter the link to your website in the first box

For example, if I want to track traffic to this little article about content promotion, I’d add this link into the first form field: https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/content-promotion-strategy/

Step 2. Set the campaign’s source, medium and name

These are the three tracking “parameters.”

• Campaign source:
  “Source” is the specific origin of traffic. In this case, it’s the name of the social media platform, such as “linkedin.”
• Campaign medium:
  “Medium” is the broadest origin of traffic. Select “social.”
• Campaign name:
  This can be anything you’d like. Give it a name that will be meaningful to anyone scanning through the campaign report, such as “content-promo-video”

As you entered these three bits of info, a new URL with the tracking code appended to it appears below. In this example, it looks like this: https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/content-promotion-strategy/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=content-promo-video

Step 3. Click “Copy URL”

Here’s what it looks like in the URL builder:

Step 4: Use that (instead of the untagged link) in your social media campaign

Now when that link gets clicked, Analytics will know that they came from this campaign and will report on that visit in the Traffic acquisition report when you select “Campaign source” as the dimension.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!