Over the past couple of weeks, I have been exploring the concept of web analytics and diving into the nitty-gritty of Google Analytics. From CTR to Visit Duration metrics and goal and segment filtering, there are many facets to Google Analytics that can be beneficial for businesses trying to understand their customers’ and prospects’ on-site habits. It is a tool utilized by nearly 5 million companies, many with 50 employees or fewer. Needless to say, a tool that is generally free and offers invaluable consumer insight, is popular.
While Google Analytics offers robust metrics, with new tools currently in Beta, it does not offer deep insights into sources of social traffic. Yes, the Acquisition report can show a company some information about how social has impacted website traffic, but it is still challenging to piece together a clear picture of why they came from social without additional information; information provided by digital analytics tools like Sprout Social. According to Peterson in The Voice of Customer: Qualitative Data as a Critical Input to Web Site Optimization, a business needs web analytics, customer experience management, and voice of the customer technologies to better understand the human behavior behind the data.
Sprout Social shines in the voice of the customer category and even touches upon web analytics.
From personal experience, I have found Sprout Social’s user interface and capabilities to be far superior to Hootsuite and Buffer. From scheduling posts to dissecting dating in their reports tab, every action is intuitive, though it comes with a hefty price tag.
Google Analytic’s social reporting capabilities also include social referrals and “assisted social” conversions. The two platforms share similar metrics such as clicks, impressions, reach and audience. The similarity between the metrics “language” of the two platforms makes it easy for a company’s marketing person to jump between the two, understand the reporting, and convey relevant metrics to those who need to understand them in simple terms.
The differences between the two platforms lie in the extent to which they offer social reporting capabilities. Google Analytics shows general traffic from social to a website; it can also breakdown traffic by social platform. Below is a screengrab from Google Analytics demonstrating its social breakdown based on established conversion goals.
The screengrab of Sprout Social’s platform below demonstrates a cross-channel report for a company’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages. The aggregated data provides an overview of how many impressions were achieved within the selected time period. Sprout Social, unlike Google Analytics, can track the specific activity associated with each individual post. It can also track mentions (shares) of a website’s link by other people and brands.
Peterson also noted gap in the web analytics industry is the “inability to describe subtle human behavior”. This, of course, has improved over time with the development and enhancements of each tool that has popped up. For the shortcomings that still exist, supplementing web analytics with other web analytics/social management hybrid tools, such as Sprout Social, can help shed light on particular campaigns, posts, and topics that are most successful for referring users to the company’s website. This concept is demonstrated by the example shared in the previous paragraph.
When both tools are used together, they can also help prove ROI of social media marketing to leadership teams. This can be done through reporting on the number of users referred to the website from social, through Google Analytics, and sharing engagement and audience growth metrics, through Sprout Social.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think! Are these two platforms compliments or competitors?
While Google Analytics offers robust metrics, with new tools currently in Beta, it does not offer deep insights into sources of social traffic. Yes, the Acquisition report can show a company some information about how social has impacted website traffic, but it is still challenging to piece together a clear picture of why they came from social without additional information; information provided by digital analytics tools like Sprout Social. According to Peterson in The Voice of Customer: Qualitative Data as a Critical Input to Web Site Optimization, a business needs web analytics, customer experience management, and voice of the customer technologies to better understand the human behavior behind the data.
Sprout Social shines in the voice of the customer category and even touches upon web analytics.
Introduction to Sprout Social
Sprout Social is considered a social media management tool as companies, or agencies, can easily schedule posts, listen for social mentions, and engage with customers through the online dashboard (desktop or through their mobile app). It is similar to popular tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite. Users can connect Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn pages. If you work for an agency, certain plan levels offer the ability to group your profiles by client. For example, Client A’s (Facebook and Twitter) and Client B’s (Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn) can be separated into folders. Below is a screenshot of what my groupings and mobile scheduling tool look like for my job.
Source: Sprout Social App, 2019
From personal experience, I have found Sprout Social’s user interface and capabilities to be far superior to Hootsuite and Buffer. From scheduling posts to dissecting dating in their reports tab, every action is intuitive, though it comes with a hefty price tag.
Similarities and Differences: Sprout Social and Google Analytics
The main similarity between these two tools is the ability to provide data regarding social media activity. At its core, Sprout Social is a digital analytics platform offering reports tailored to individual platforms and cross-channel views. Users can track social conversions and Google Analytics can even be integrated into the reports.Google Analytic’s social reporting capabilities also include social referrals and “assisted social” conversions. The two platforms share similar metrics such as clicks, impressions, reach and audience. The similarity between the metrics “language” of the two platforms makes it easy for a company’s marketing person to jump between the two, understand the reporting, and convey relevant metrics to those who need to understand them in simple terms.
The differences between the two platforms lie in the extent to which they offer social reporting capabilities. Google Analytics shows general traffic from social to a website; it can also breakdown traffic by social platform. Below is a screengrab from Google Analytics demonstrating its social breakdown based on established conversion goals.
Source: Patel, 2019
The screengrab of Sprout Social’s platform below demonstrates a cross-channel report for a company’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages. The aggregated data provides an overview of how many impressions were achieved within the selected time period. Sprout Social, unlike Google Analytics, can track the specific activity associated with each individual post. It can also track mentions (shares) of a website’s link by other people and brands.
Source: Data Drive, n.d.
Why Sprout Social is a Good Compliment to Google Analytics
Because Google Analytics’ social reports are really only capable of providing the number of users that came to the site from social media, there are gaps in a company’s understanding of the users’ behavior. Sprout Social offers insights into users’ engagement and interactions with individual posts which provides more context to their customer journey. For example, if a company offers multiple services and a post about one particular service seems to be more popular, then the company can infer that there is a prevalent interest/need in that service and ramp up focus on it accordingly.Peterson also noted gap in the web analytics industry is the “inability to describe subtle human behavior”. This, of course, has improved over time with the development and enhancements of each tool that has popped up. For the shortcomings that still exist, supplementing web analytics with other web analytics/social management hybrid tools, such as Sprout Social, can help shed light on particular campaigns, posts, and topics that are most successful for referring users to the company’s website. This concept is demonstrated by the example shared in the previous paragraph.
When both tools are used together, they can also help prove ROI of social media marketing to leadership teams. This can be done through reporting on the number of users referred to the website from social, through Google Analytics, and sharing engagement and audience growth metrics, through Sprout Social.
Are Sprout Social and Google Analytics Competitors?
The answer to whether or not Google Analytics and Sprout Social are competitors depends on a company’s needs. If they only have their own social pages to deal with, they may not need a social media management tool at all because they can rely on the platforms’ innate analytics. In this scenario, just using Google Analytics could be sufficient. For an agency, using a social media management tool like Sprout Social in conjunction with Google Analytics makes more sense because the agency can provide monthly reports to clients and demonstrate their ROI (and thus the value of continuing to work with the agency). For these reasons, Sprout Social and Google Analytics are definitely complementary rather than competitors.Leave a comment and let me know what you think! Are these two platforms compliments or competitors?
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