How do i get Social Media Actions Tracked in GA

[Nightwing]

Greetings from 17 degrees C wetherby UK

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/how-do-get-this.jpg

The above url pints to dat I'd love to see in my Google analytics account but instead all i can see is this:
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/no-socail-media-engagementcopy.jpg

What i really want to measure is Facebook Likes etc not just referral traffic from social media sites. So my question is please...

"Do i have to add additional tracking code to Google analytics as explained here - https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingSocial "

Thanks in advance,
David

[ThompsonPaul]

Just wondering if you ever got this working to your satisfaction, Nightwing?

Also, if appropriate, could you mark a  "Good Answer" and mark the overall question as answered? This will help other users who may come across the question in the future.

Thanks!

Paul

[ThompsonPaul]

The short answer, Nightwing, is yes And the equally short answer if you're using Wordpress is - try the plugin!

There's nothing about the clicking of a social button on a page that triggers any kind of event that Google Analytics can see, so you have to add code to the page so GA can sense and record the interaction. (basically a more sophisticated version of adding event tracking)

I haven't implemented this myself yet, so no advice other than - don't try to use the GA Developer instructions. Don't know about you, but those instructions are pretty opaque, to me.

If the plugin doesn't work for you, google the topic and see if you can find something that's better written. The couple I'm looking at are

• http://yoast.com/social-buttons/  (WordPress - yoast is always top-notch)
• http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/tutorial-add-google-social-analytics-to-your-self-hosted-wordpress-blog/
• http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-track-tweets-facebook-likes-and-more-with-google-analytics/

One of the cool things you can do with this is track these interactions on your Facebook Tab pages!

Paul