Where I introduced the concept of social interactions tracking in Google Analytics and explained in great detail how to track Facebook ‘likes’ and ‘unlikes’ with and without Google Tag Manager.
Do check it out, if you have not already.
Today I am going to show you how to track Twitter social interactions (tweets, clicks and follows) and Linkedin interactions (shares) in Google Analytics with and without Google Tag Manager:
Introduction to Twitter tracking in Google Analytics
In Google Analytics (GA), Twitter Interactions/events can mean:
Click
Tweet
Retweet
Favourite
Follow
‘Click’ event is triggered when a user clicks on a Twitter button. The Twitter button can be: Tweet button, Follow button, Hashtag button or Mention button:
‘Tweet’ event is triggered when a user publishes a tweet. The tweet can be a new tweet or a reply to some other tweet.
‘Retweet’ event is triggered when a user retweets a tweet.
‘Favorite’ event is triggered when a user ‘ favourites’ a tweet.
‘Follow’ event is triggered when a user follows you.
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In this article we will be tracking: clicks, tweets and follows. I couldn’t find a way to track ‘retweets’ and ‘favorites’. I am also not sure whether these events can even be tracked in the first place.
To send Twitter interactions data to Google Analytics, use the Google Analytics ‘send’ command with social hit type:
ga(‘send’, ‘social’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Click’, window.location.href); // Send twitter clicks to GA
ga(‘send’, ‘social’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Tweet’, window.location.href); // Send twitter tweets to GA
ga(‘send’, ‘social’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Follow’, window.location.href); // Send twitter follows to GA
Once you have implemented Twitter Interactions tracking, you can see the data in your GA view by going to Acquisition > Social > Plugins report and then click on the ‘Social Source and Action’ tab:
Requirements for Twitter Tracking in Google Analytics
Following are the requirements for implementing Twitter interactions tracking in Google Analytics:
#1 Universal Analytics tracking installed on the website
I have written this article for tracking Twitter interactions via the plugins provided by Twitter.
There are many social sharing plugins in the market like Addthis, Shareaholic, Disqus, Sumome etc which provide their own plugins for Twitter.
However, tracking Twitter interactions in Google Analytics via these social plugins is different and is not covered in this article. If you want to track twitter events via these plugins then you first need to find their callback function and then use this callback function to push Twitter events data into Google Analytics.
To get more accurate count of twitter interactions occurred on your website, just use the plugins provided by Twitter.
Note: Through Twitter Interaction tracking you can track only those Twitter interactions which occurred on your website via the plugin you are tracking. You can not track twitter interactions across the internet.
Tracking Twitter Social Interactions without using GTM
Following is the process for tracking Twitter ‘clicks’, ‘tweets’ and ‘follows’ without using Google Tag Manager in a nutshell:
Step-1: Install the official Twitter plugin(s) from here: https://about.twitter.com/resources/buttons
Step-2: Add the following widgets.js script in the head section (before the closing </head> tag on each page of your website:
<script>
// Load the the widgets.js script in the head section of your template
window.twttr = (function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
t = window.twttr || {};
if (d.getElementById(id)) return t;
js = d.createElement(s);
js.id = id;
js.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
t._e = [];
t.ready = function(f) {
t._e.push(f);
};
return t;
}(document, "script", "twitter-wjs"));
</script>
Step-3: Add the following Twitter interactions tracking code just after your official Twitter plugin code on each page of the website:
<script>
// Define Call Back Functions
function clickEventToAnalytics() {
ga('send', 'social', 'Twitter', 'Click', window.location.href);
}
function tweetIntentToAnalytics() {
ga('send', 'social', 'Twitter', 'Tweet', window.location.href);
}
function retweetIntentToAnalytics() {
ga('send', 'social', 'Twitter', 'Retweet', window.location.href);
}
function followIntentToAnalytics() {
ga('send', 'social', 'Twitter', 'Follow', window.location.href);
}
// Bind Twitter events to Call Back Functions
if (typeof twttr !== 'undefined') {
twttr.ready(function (twttr) {
twttr.events.bind('click', clickEventToAnalytics);
twttr.events.bind('tweet', tweetIntentToAnalytics);
twttr.events.bind('retweet', retweetIntentToAnalytics);
twttr.events.bind('follow', followIntentToAnalytics);
});
}
</script>
Tracking Twitter Social Interactions via GTM
Following is the process for tracking Twitter ‘clicks’, ‘tweets’ and ‘follows’ through Google Tag Manager in a nutshell:
Step-1: Install the official Twitter plugin(s) from here: https://about.twitter.com/resources/buttons
Step-2: Add the widgets.js script (mentioned above) in the head section (before the closing </head> tag on each page of your website. Just like Facebook JavaScript SDK, the widgets.js script can’t be deployed via GTM.
Step-3: In order to capture and push Twitter events into the GTM data layer, create the following Custom HTML tag in your GTM and name it ‘Capture and Push Twitter Events into Data Layer’:
Note: If you have already created these data layers before for the purpose of tracking Facebook social interactions then you don’t need to create them again. Just use the existing data layer variables.
Step-5: In order to send twitter events to Google Analytics, create a new tag of type ‘Universal Analytics’ and name it ‘Send Twitter Events to Google Analytics‘. Configure this tag as shown below:
Track Type: Social
Network: {{Social Network}}
Action: {{Social Action}}
Target: {{Social Target}}
{{Social Network}}, {{Social Action}} and {{Social Target}} are the data layer variables we just created.
Fire this tag on the trigger named ‘On Twitter Interaction’. Configure this trigger as shown below:
Tracking Linkedin shares is tricky because its callback function doesn’t work. It stopped working years ago and I don’t think it is going to work any time soon.
To track Linkedin shares in Google Analytics, follow the steps below:
Step-1: Go to Linkedin share plugin generator page: https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share and grab the button code. It will look like the one below:
Linkedin doesn’t let you add the ‘onClick’ event handler to its button, so I wrapped this button with an empty anchor tag (the tag without anchor text) and add the onClick event handler to it.
This onClick event handler sends the LinkedIn shares data count to Google Analytics on button click. This is not foolproof tracking as a user may click on the button but may not share your article. But this is the best solution I have found so far.
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