How to Track GA4 Social Media Traffic (Ultimate Guide 2024)

Do you run social media campaigns and want to know how to track GA4 social media traffic?

In the digital world, understanding the impact of social media on your website traffic is important. You need to track the outcomes and social media ROI of campaigns to understand the return on the resources and budget invested in them. With Google Analytics 4 (GA4), tracking social media traffic has become more insightful and user-friendly. 

In this article, we’ll discuss how to track social media traffic with Google Analytics 4.

Why Track Social Media Traffic in Google Analytics?

If you are a business owner, digital marketer, or just starting with Google Analytics, understanding why tracking social media traffic in Google Analytics is essential could be a game-changer for your online strategy. Here’s why:

• Comprehensive Audience Insights: Google Analytics provides deep insights into who visits your website from social media platforms. This data includes demographics, interests, and behaviors, allowing for more targeted marketing strategies.
• Campaign Performance Evaluation: Tracking social media traffic can help you assess the performance of your social media campaigns. You’ll see which platforms are driving the most traffic and engagement, helping you optimize your efforts and budget allocation.
• Enhanced Content Strategy: Analyzing which social media posts lead to the most website visits helps refine your content strategy. You can focus on creating content that resonates with your audience and drives more traffic.
• Conversion Tracking: Google Analytics enables you to track conversions from social media traffic. You can see how many visitors from social media completed a desired action, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, helping to calculate your Social Media ROI.
• Understanding User Behavior: Track how users from different social media channels interact with your website. This information can guide website improvements for better user experience and increased engagement.
• Bounce Rate Analysis: Discover if your social media traffic is engaged with your site or if they leave quickly. A high bounce rate from a social channel might indicate irrelevant or misleading content on that platform.
• Customized Reporting: With Google Analytics, you can create customized reports that focus on your social media traffic, giving you the data you need in an easy-to-understand format.
• Competitive Advantage: You gain insights that many competitors might overlook by effectively tracking and analyzing social media traffic. You can leverage this knowledge to gain a competitive edge in your market.

How to Track Social Media Traffic with Google Analytics 4

 Let’s learn how to track social media traffic using Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

1. View Organic Social in Traffic Acquisition Report (GA4)

To view organic social traffic in Google Analytics 4, follow the below steps.

Step 1: Log in to the GA4 Account

First, log into your GA4 account and choose the relevant Property. 

Step 2: Go to Traffic Acquisition

Next, navigate to the Traffic Acquisition report in GA4. Here, you’ll view organic social traffic and understand how social media channels contribute to your site’s traffic.

Step 3: Customize Your Metrics to Get More Valuable Insights in GA4

When using GA4 to track organic social media traffic, customizing the metrics to your specific needs and requirements can offer more meaningful insights. Here are our favorite metrics that you can track in a GA4 report to view organic social traffic:

1. Users: This metric refers to the number of unique visitors from social media platforms. It helps in understanding the reach of your social media efforts.
2. Sessions: Sessions indicate the total number of times users interacted with your site from social media. It’s a measure of user engagement and interest.
3. Engagement Rate: Engagement rate is a crucial metric showing the percentage of actively engaged sessions with your site. A high engagement rate from social media implies an effective content strategy.
4. Session Conversion Rate: This metric tracks the percentage of sessions from social media that resulted in a conversion. It’s vital to understand the effectiveness of social media in achieving specific business goals.
5. Event Count: Event count tallies the number of interactions (events) users had on your site. This could include link clicks, video plays, or downloads, indicating how interactive and engaging your content is.

2. Identify Social Channels in the GA4 Traffic Acquisition Report

To effectively track and analyze which social channels are directing traffic to your website using Google Analytics 4 (GA4), follow these straightforward steps:

Step 1: Select Session Source in the Primary Dimension

• Click on the Session default channel group to choose the Primary Dimension.

• Then, select the Session Source in the primary dimension of your GA4 Traffic Acquisition report. This will enable you to view the origins of your website sessions, including various social media platforms.

Step 2: Add Filter

• Next, add a filter to refine your data:
  • Select Session Medium in the dimension field.
  • Choose the match type as Exactly Match.
  • Select the dimension value as Social.
  • Finally, click Apply.

Once you apply these settings, GA4 will display the traffic that your social channels are bringing to your website, offering a clear view of their impact and reach.

3. Which Blog Posts are Getting Traffic from Specific Social Media Platforms 

Understanding which of your blog posts and pages are attracting traffic from social media platforms like Facebook can be incredibly valuable. It helps you to adjust your content and SEO strategy to what’s working the best. 

To understand which of your blog posts are attracting traffic from social media channels, follow these steps in GA4:

Step 1: Go to Engagement

First, head over to the Reports section.

Look for the Life Cycle category, then navigate to the Engagement section in your GA4 dashboard. 

Step 2: Go to Pages and Screens

Within the Engagement section, find and click on Pages and Screens. This report shows how different pages or screens of your site perform in terms of user engagement.

You can also check this report straight from your Analytify dashboard. 

Step 3: Set the Primary Dimension

Once you’re in the Pages and Screens section in GA4, you’ll need to set your primary dimension.

Choose Page Path and Screen Class.

Step 4: Click on Add Filter

To filter out traffic reports from a specific source, like Facebook, you’ll need to add a filter.

Click on Add Filter, as shown in the below screenshot.

Then select Session Source as your dimension.

For the Match Type, select Exactly Match.

And enter the value m.facebook.com to filter for traffic from Facebook..

With these steps, you can see which pages and blog posts are drawing in visitors from Facebook. 

4. Track Social Media Campaigns with UTM Campaign URL Builder

Maximizing the effectiveness of your social media campaigns in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is important. One of the best ways to do this is by using UTM parameters. UTM parameters are tags added to a URL to track the effectiveness of campaigns and content. You can use tools like the UTM Campaign URL Builder to generate a URL with these parameters for tracking traffic from social media platforms.

For instance, Analytify’s UTM Campaigns URL Builder is an excellent resource for this purpose.

Explore: GA4 UTM Parameters [An Ultimate Guide]

Step 1: Go to Acquisition and Then Traffic Acquisition

• Start by navigating to the Acquisition section in GA4 and then proceed to Traffic Acquisition. This area is essential for analyzing where your traffic is coming from.

Step 2: Select Session Campaign

• In the Traffic Acquisition report, choose Session Campaign as your focus. This selection helps you identify and analyze the traffic from specific campaigns, including those tagged with UTM parameters.

Step 3: Add Filter

• To get your social media campaign data:
  • First, select Session Medium.
  • Then, ensure you check or choose Social as the medium.
  • This filtering will isolate the traffic coming specifically from social media platforms, linked to your UTM-tagged campaigns.

By following these steps, you can accurately track and assess the performance of your social media campaigns, understanding how effectively they drive traffic to your website. 

How to Track Social Media Traffic in WordPress (Analytify Dashboard)

Analytify is a user-friendly WordPress plugin that integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics. With Analytify, users can easily interpret their website data, especially those without deep technical knowledge.

Tracking Social Media Traffic in Analytify

Tracking social media traffic through Analytify involves a few steps:

1. Integration with Google Analytics: First, ensure that Analytify is properly integrated with your Google Analytics account. 
2. Accessing Social Media Reports: Within the Analytify dashboard, navigate to the Social Network section. This area provides a comprehensive view of the traffic coming from various social media platforms.

3. Analyzing Traffic Data: Analytify breaks down the traffic data from social media into understandable metrics. You can view the number of visitors, their behavior, and how they interact with your site. This information is crucial for understanding the impact of your social media efforts.

Additionally, you can access real-time statistics to see the immediate impact of your social media posts and campaigns.

4. Evaluating User Engagement: With Analytify, you can also assess the engagement level of users coming from social media. Metrics like session duration, bounce rate, and pages per session are easily accessible and offer insights into user behavior.

Troubleshoot if Paid Social Not Showing in GA4

Let’s first understand what paid social is in the context of Google Analytics and then explore possible reasons and solutions for paid social traffic not showing.

What is Paid Social in Google Analytics

• Paid Social Definition: In Google Analytics, Paid Social refers to traffic that comes to your website from paid advertising on social media platforms. This includes sponsored posts, ads, and any form of paid promotions on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.
• Different from Organic Social: It’s important to differentiate paid social media from organic social traffic. Organic social traffic stems from non-paid sources like regular social media posts, shares, or tweets.

Reasons Why Paid Social Might Not Show in GA4

• Incorrect UTM Parameters: The most common reason for not seeing paid social traffic is improper use of UTM parameters. Ensure your paid social ads are tagged with the correct UTM parameters for source, medium, and campaign. For paid social, typically, the medium is tagged as ‘paid_social’ or ‘cpc’ (cost per click).

Make sure that your UTM parameters are correctly implemented. They should accurately reflect the medium (e.g., ‘paid_social’) and the specific social platform as the source. Read our resource on GA4 UTM Parameters to correctly implement UTM parameters.

• Misconfiguration in GA4: Another reason could be a misconfiguration in your GA4 settings. Double-check your data stream and tagging setup to ensure everything is correctly configured.

Ensure your GA4 property is correctly set up to receive and process data from various sources, including paid social channels.

GA4 Social Media Traffic FAQs

Conclusion

With this detailed article, you can now track GA4 social media traffic. This article is really helpful, from the initial steps of tracking social media traffic with Google Analytics to the advanced tactics of distinguishing between various traffic types. Get these insights to refine your online strategies. Your ability to interpret data from Google Analytics social media traffic can help you make informed decisions and robust marketing strategies.

You may also like to read Traffic Acquisition Report GA4: A Complete Guide (2024).

Now, let’s hear from you. How have you used GA4 to transform your social media strategy, and how has it impacted your business growth? Share your experiences in the comments.