How to set up Google Analytics Social Reports and Goals

Google have recently rolled out their new Social Reports in Google Analytics. This feature is a great way to measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media.
After trawling the internet, I was still confused exactly how I should set up my Google Analytics account to make best use of these new features.
This article will take you through the steps needed to set up your Google Analytics Social Reports.

If you are looking for a feature list, take a look here.
The first thing you need to know is that the social reports run off goals within Google Analytics.
If you already have goals set up, your reports (found by clicking Standard Reports > Traffic Sources > Social > Overview) should already be showing you some data, however if your only seeing $0 values, you need to create some goals.

What are goals?

Goals in Google Analytics are tasks that a website visitor should complete. You give a monetary in dollars for each goal you create. For some people, this is easy as getting people beyond a landing page to a paid product is the goal, in this case, the monetary value should obviously be the value of the product.
However you might also want to set up a goal of people viewing a certain number of pages, or staying on the website for a specific amount of time. These are harder to put values on, however they enable will enable you to see which social network generates the most engaged visitors.

How to create goals

Goals are created by:

1. Click ‘Admin’ in the top right
2. Click the ‘Goals’ tab
3. Click ‘+Goal’
4. Give the goal a name
5. Select the goal type
6. Fill in the appropriate fields
7. Click ‘Save’

You can have up to 5 goals within each of the 4 goal sets.

What happens now?

Now you are all set up to go!
Yep, I didn’t believe it was that easy either.
Unfortunately the social reports will take a day or two to kick in with your new data.
However while your waiting for them, you can still take a look at the ‘Conversions’ part of Google Analytics to see how your customers are doing.
You can also identify exactly which networks are driving the most traffic to your website by viewing sources.

How are you finding the Social Reports? Do you know of any hidden gems that others might not know of? Let me know in the comments below.