What is a 30 Minute Social Session?
30 Minute Social Sessions are my tested recommendations to help solopreneurs take the overwhelming feeling out of social media marketing. For each session, I’ll show you easy ways to add social media into your already crazy busy day.
Each session will show you steps you can do once a week for 30 minutes to help you grow your social media presence and to get your message heard by the people who want to buy your stuff.
If you missed last month’s 30 Minute Social Session about Facebook, click here to read how I scheduled these Facebook 30 Minute Social Sessions once a week into my calendar.
And don’t forget your timer!
We talked about using a timer in the last 30 Minute Social Session so you can do these steps in 30 minutes or less. I like to use this timer because I can see the time left in the browser’s tab and I don’t need to keep checking the browser page to check my remaining time: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/countdown-timer/
You can use this one or an app on your phone or if you have a timer you use for cooking. Whatever you use, just keep it near your desk so you can stay on track with your time.
This Month’s 30 Minute Social Session: Google Analytics
When I log into my Google Analytics to see what’s going on with my website, I feel confused, overwhelmed and a lot like Alice in Wonderland when she falls down the rabbit hole. I was never sure where to look, what to monitor and which thing I should be tracking.
I felt a lot like Alice in this part of her story:
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
Let’s get this Google party started
If you’re reading this edition of the 30 Minute Social Sessions, you’re probably feeling the same way about your Google Analytics too. Let’s just jump right into this and I’ll show you how I figured out how to track my site’s traffic in 30 minutes.
First things first -is your site even connected to Google Analytics? Most programmers and web designers will set up your site to the Google Analytics monitors when they develop your site. The program is FREE (one of our favorite words!) and it usually takes a programmer less than 30 minutes to hook up the program by adding some coding into your site.
For those of you who do NOT have Google Analytics tracking your site, take a look at this post to give you the steps for you or your programmer to install Google Analytics: How to Install Google Analytics
Once you’re set up and ready to go, log into the program and click around to get familiar with the features. It’s easy to get lost in all that data so the first time you’re in the site, just use that time to look, read and learn.
30 Minute Blocks of Time
Each 30 Minute Social Session is about taking productive tasks and breaking them down into focused blocks of time. I recommend you schedule these Google Analytics 30 Minute Social Sessions once a month into your calendar.
Just like with the Facebook session, I blocked off the time in my calendar like I would for a meeting or when I have a coaching call. Get out a piece of paper, a word document or any app that you use to take notes. You’ll want to keep this information in one place so you can compare your numbers throughout the year.
I tested two different combinations for my 30 minute block of time.
Google Analytic Session 1: Get your baseline
This session is about finding out where you are right now. I always say, “How do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been?”
You can do a Baseline Session less frequently than the monthly check-in. I recommend doing the Baseline Session in the month of January and then you can pull these numbers either quarterly or just twice a year (like mid-year in June or July and then again in December).
For this session, I set the timer for 30 minutes and did the following checklist:
1. In the right hand corner of the program, change the dates for the full year of January 1, 2013 – December 31, 2013 and hit apply. The program will now pull up the data for the full year.
2. Then click on the following sequence: Acquisitions – Channels
Write down the numbers for Organic Search and Social. Your organic search numbers will show the number of people who found your site when they were doing an online search and landed on your site. Organic search does NOT include search results for any Google adword campaigns that you ran. Those results can be found in the Google Adword campaign section.
For the purpose of this session, we’re going to focus on your organic results. This traffic could have been from a blog post, something you were selling or maybe something in your home page that triggered your site to pop up in their search list. We’ll discover these reasons later in our checklist.
Your social numbers will give you an overall view of how many clicked into your site from your social media sites. We’ll get into more details about this section as well.
3. Check your keywords (how they found you in the organic search) by following this sequence: Acquisitions – Keywords – Organic
Keywords are the words that people type into a search and found your site. For most people, your number one keyword will be something called ‘not provided.’ For those who do pay for Google Adword campaigns, you’ll be able to pull this information in your Adword reports. The rest of us can only review what’s listed and write them down in order in your tracking document.
4. Where is your web traffic coming from? Use this sequence: Acquisitions – All Traffic
Write down your top 10 traffic referral sites into your tracking report. You’ll see the term (direct) / (none). From the word choice, it looks like nothing is being tracked but it really means that this line of referral is from direct traffic. These are the visitors who can came to your site directly and typed in your site’s URL.
5. How many new people have found you and how many are those that have discovered you already. Use this sequence: Audience – Behavior – New vs Returning
This is a great section to see how many new people come to your site and then how many come back. Write down the total number of New and Returning in your recap report as well as the information about how many pages they visited and how long they stayed on your site. This information can help you tell if your content is valuable to your visitors. Do they stay and read or leave right after they clicked in?
6. Next let’s take a look at your content and what’s bringing people to your site. Use this sequence: Behavior – Site content
Write down the top 10 pages on your site and the number of page views. This gives you a good overview of what types of content people are reading on your site. If it’s a blog post, can you write more about that topic? If it’s a product page, can you run a specific sale on that product to get more people to your site? Think about how you can expand on these content pages and give visitors a new reason to come back.
7. Drill down deeper to your top referral source. To do this step, follow this sequence: Acquisitions – All Referrals
My top referral source is Pinterest. Within this section, I can click on the Pinterest link and it takes me to a breakout of the top pins/images that brought people to my site. I wrote down my top 10 pins and the number of traffic clicks from those images.
I can also track my traffic from Twitter, my newsletter and all the places where I do guest blog posts but not Facebook. Right now, Facebook is the only program that won’t give me more information other than the number of people who came to my site.
If Facebook is a top referral source for your site, try using a trackable link program like https://bitly.com/. Using a program like this will help you track your links so you can see which posts your fans clicked on to take you to your website.
Google Analytic Session 2: Monthly Check-in
After I did my baseline recap, I did a monthly check-in track my site’s traffic last month.
For this session, I set the timer for 30 minutes and did the following checklist:
1. In the right hand corner of the program, change the dates for the full year of December 1, 2013 – December 31, 2013 and hit apply. The program will now pull up the data for the month.
2. Then click on the following sequence: Acquisitions – Channels
Write down the numbers for Organic Search and Social. Remember, this is just for the number of people who found your site when they were doing an online search and landed on your site. Organic search does NOT include search results for any Google adword campaigns that you ran. Those results can be found in the Google Adword campaign section.
3. Check your keywords (how they found you in the organic search) by following this sequence: Acquisitions – Keywords – Organic
Write down the top Keywords that people typed into a search and found your site.
4. Where is your web traffic coming from? Use this sequence: Acquisitions – All Traffic
Write down your top 10 traffic referral sites into your tracking report.
5. How many new people have found you and how many are those that have discovered you already. Use this sequence: Audience – Behavior – New vs Returning
Add in the total number of New and Returning to your tracking report as well as the information about how many pages they visited and how long they stayed on your site.
6. Next let’s take a look at your content and what’s bringing people to your site. Use this sequence: Behavior – Site content
Write down the top 10 pages on your site and the number of page views.
7. Find the specific content that became your top referral source. To do this step, follow this sequence: Acquisitions – All Referrals
As I said before, my top referral source is Pinterest. When I get to this section, I write down my top 10 pins and the number of traffic clicks from those images. I also click into my other referral sources and see what the top content/post/tweet sent traffic to my site.
What did I learn?
I did these Google Analytics 30 Minute Social Session once a week for a full month. During those four weeks, I learned quite a bit about how to be more efficient with my time.
1. I learned that a timer kept me on task. The last time I did a review of my checklist, I was in and out in 22 minutes.
2. I got a full picture of the content that brought my site traffic.
I promoted the 10 Day Social Media Challenge during the month of December. I was sure that this would be in my top content page for the month. It actually came in at number 8 with my Social Media with a Strategy, the Strategy Builder and my blog coming in on top.
4. I learned which pin/images had the highest click-thrus.
Once again, my free online Social Media with a Strategy class came in on top with several different blog post pins following closely behind. The 10 Day Challenge images didn’t even make the top ten list. My analytics showed me that most of the people who signed up came directly to the page and from a free gift page from a telesummit that I participated in January.
Overall, I felt that my Google Anayltics 30 Minute Social Session was an eye-opening experience. I learned quite a bit about what content brought the most people to my site and where they came from. And I learned all of this for 30 minutes a week!
Post your comments!
I opened up the comments section for this page so let me know how the Google Analytics 30 Minute Social Sessions works for you. Feel free to ask questions or just share your experiences with these steps.
If you missed the Facebook 30 Minute Social Session, click here to read the 30 minute steps to take to increase your Facebook’s fan page engagement.
And stay tuned for the next 30 Minute Social Sessions where I’ll review how to use Twitter to increase your social presence.