First, we’ll look at how “Google Analytics plays a part in measuring social media traffic.” Then, we’ll review how it can help with tracking phone conversions. Finally, we’ll look at how to link your AdWords account to your analytics account for better ROI tracking.

Measuring Social Media Traffic through Advanced Segmentation

One of the most challenging things about getting involved with social media is measuring effectiveness. Tool vendors are scrambling to build tools that will allow the measurement of sentiment, profitability, traffic, etc. If you’ve already set up Google analytics, then you’re on your way to measuring social media traffic. Let’s take a closer look.

The idea here is to set up a segment to monitor traffic from either one specific site like Twitter, or multiple sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Let’s set one up for analyzing Twitter traffic. After you log into Google Analytics, find the gray Settings box on the left. Here, you’ll find a link to “advanced segments.” Then:

1. Click on “create new custom segment” in the upper right corner.
2. Look under the green dimensions box and click on “traffic sources.”
3. Drag the “source” rectangle and drop it in on top of the words “dimension or metric.”
4. For the condition, select “Matches regular expression.”
5. For the value type in twitter\.com. (Note: If you want to use Facebook or LinkedIn, the syntax would be facebook\.com or linkedin\.com.)

Name your segment below and click on the button “create segment” and you’re done. To activate the measuring, go back to your dashboard and look in the upper right for “advanced segments.” You should now see a checkbox for Twitter Traffic. Check it and apply. That’s it.

Now you should see any Twitter traffic in relationship to all of your traffic. If you would like to track multiple sites at once, then in the “value” box just put a “|” symbol between each site like this: twitter\.com | facebook\.com | linkedin\.com.

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Are they real? Who knows, but we’ll confess we kinda like them – super simple for a web-centric experience. They’ll probably turn out to be mockups from a kid in Delaware. Or pinched from an Engadget story published years ago.

Or something. We don’t care…they’re cool, and we’re only gonna keep prodding Google (Google) until we get to see the real thing.

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From the looks of it, this could mean some pretty big changes on Twitter. As you can see in the mock-ups above and below, the retweet (written as “RT” in most tweets) is no longer a part of the actual tweet itself, but rather is a link below the tweet. While that certainly is a cleaner way of doing things, it will be interesting to see if this makes retweeting less or more enticing. And it could potentially help users find new people to follow (more on that below).

But as co-founder Biz Stone notes on the Twitter blog, the current method of retweeting on twitter.com is a cumbersome process of copying and pasting. They want to change that. He calls this “Phase One” of “Project Retweet,” and notes that it is going out to developers first so they can be ready for the change, and indicates that it’s not quite ready for prime-time:

We are still sketching out exactly how this feature and its API counterpart works. Sharing our thoughts before launching means developers will have the opportunity to prepare their applications. In a few weeks or so we’ll launch the feature on our web site and because app developers had a chance to prepare, it should become available across most of the Twitter ecosystem about the same time. This way, we can all enjoy retweeting?however we choose to access Twitter.

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Google launched a suite of “social gadgets” for iGoogle, including games, shared to-do lists, and video-sharing on YouTube.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is giving people the option of adding social-networking capabilities to iGoogle, potentially expanding the personalized home page’s reach into such popular sites as MySpace, Friendster and others.

Google on Wednesday launched 19 “social gadgets”developed by the search engine or third parties. The mini-applications included multi-player games, such as Scrabble and chess; joint to-do lists and video-sharing on YouTube.

In addition, Google is giving iGoogle users the option of adding a “friends” section comprising people selected from the users’ Google contacts list. iGoogle users can share social gadget activities with these people. Google also has added a chat feature for messaging contacts directly from iGoogle.

Before the new social features, iGoogle primarily offered a single location for search and accessing applications, such as Gmail, and content, including syndicated feeds, weather information and news articles. Users can choose to leave out the new features, which are meant to keep people on iGoogle longer by eventually making it a hub for social-networking activities.

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But with the advent of social media (facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.), more entrepreneurs are looking at how to coordinate their ordinary marketing with this new online environment.

Social media etiquette is evolving to show that these online participants are looking for a more of a personal connection; even with businesses they encounter there.

As business owners experiment on these platforms they are learning that branding moves beyond just logo consistency, into that of requiring more personal promotion. It becomes important for potential customers to see YOU as the brand.

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According to Twitter founder Ev Williams: “Yes, we did suffer an attack a few weeks ago and are familiar with this list of stuff. This is unrelated to the hack of Twitter where someone gained access to users’ accounts. This had nothing to do with the security of Twitter.com, and there were no user accounts compromised here…..

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If you’ve used the Internet at all in the past few years, you’ve undoubtedly already seen these from other ad providers. They are ads that start out as regular box or rectangle ads, but then expand into much larger ones that sit on top of content.

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Google announced today the launch of a new skills qualification program, Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ), which allows individuals to demonstrate proficiency in Google Analytics. Google provides a free online course that covers web analytics techniques and Google Analytics implementation, administration, and analysis tools. Agencies and other organizations can have staff take the course as part of professional development.

While Google Analytics is easy to use for beginners, it’s most powerful in the hands of knowledgeable users. Qualified users will be effective at leveraging Google Analytics within their organizations and at helping others to do the same. The Google Analytics IQ program is tailored for agencies who want to retain and develop employees who are knowledgeable about Web analytics, and for individuals who seek ways to improve their job prospects or further their own personal development. Individuals do not have to be associated with an agency or organization to take the online course or test.

“Google is an important partner to both GroupM and its clients,” said Rob Norman, Director of Interactive at WPP agency GroupM Worldwide. “Google Analytics is an important resource in helping us to understand the opportunity that Google presents, and our participation demonstrates our continued commitment to gaining insight in all our key channels.”

There is also recognition among industry analysts of the need for more individual analytics certification. For example, in a September 8, 2008 report from Forrester Research titled, Sourcing Analytics Help, successful businesses “View Web analytics as a greenfield opportunity to propel their organizations forward. Although external consultants can feed new ideas and facilitate growth, ongoing improvement is only possible if internal staff members lead the charge and champion efforts from within.”

The Google Analytics IQ online course and a link to the Google Analytics IQ test can be found at ConversionUniversity.com.

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