Social Analytics – FAQ
Getting Started
Social Analytics is divided into three main views: Total Social Activity, Shares, and Social Referrals. To switch views, click on the tabs at the top of the page. Each view can be filtered by date range, and individual social networks. Each view also includes a list of top URLs that change depending on your filters.
Clicking a top URL lets you see the same data, but for that specific URL rather than across your entire site.
What is Total Social Activity?
It’s the big, juicy hero number. It’s the one your boss will love. (If you’re the boss, you’ll love it too!) Total social activity is the combination of “Shares” and “Social Referrals”. Check them out in more detail below.
What are shares?
Any time someone clicks one of the ShareThis buttons on your site, we track it as a “Share”. We track and display them in social analytics by network (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) so you can see which platforms people are sharing your content to and when. We also capture when someone highlights and copies a snippet of content from your pages even when they don’t interact with the share buttons.
What are Social Referrals?
Any time a visitor arrives on your site by clicking a link that was posted on a social network, we count it as a “Social Referral.” Like shares, we track social referrals by network, so you can see where people are coming to your site from and when.
Social Referrals provide great insight into how your content is resonating on various Social Networks. You may be surprised to see where some of your visitors are coming from! For example, if you’re seeing an uptick from Pinterest on a particular piece of content, explore it! Create similar content and post it on Pinterest. You may have found a new audience!
Why are the share counts displayed on my site so much bigger than the number of “Shares” in Social Analytics?
“Shares” in social analytics are only counted when people click the share buttons on your site. The share counts that appear on your site are actually the Total Social Activity for that URL (shares + social referrals) We also include native sharing activity from Facebook in the number on your site (unless you turn it off in your button settings). This makes the share counts on your site even larger, because it’s counting and including all of the social activity on Facebook that we don’t have direct visibility into.
How often do share statistics update within the dashboard?
We update share statistics once a day. The latest data would be from the previous day. We update around 12:30AM UTC.
I’m using your Legacy buttons and haven’t fully migrated over to the new Inline Share Buttons on the Platform, can I still get analytics?
No, you must use our Inline Share Buttons in order to access the analytics dashboard. If you haven’t migrated already, we highly recommend to do so and you may check our support guide, here.
Social Analytics Known Issues
UTM tracking
If you append UTM tracking codes to your links, Social Activity may not be tracked for those specific URLs. The UTM code can mask the referral source, preventing Social Analytics from seeing where the referral originated. We are working on a solution.
If you have any other feature requests or recommendations, please we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to reach out to us directly through the “Support” button on the bottom-right corner.