Connect a Google Analytics account

Use Google Analytics with Hootsuite Advanced Analytics to find out which organic posts, ads, and pages drive the most website traffic or customer conversions. You can then use that information to improve your social media and content strategy.

Google Analytics tracks a customer journey from clicks on a link in your social organic post or ad, to visiting your website, to completing a conversion. Conversions are actions that you want customers to take, such as visiting a specific page on your website, subscribing to your email newsletter, or purchasing a product or service.

Configure your Google Analytics account

Complete the following tasks in Google Analytics (GA) to make sure your account is ready connect to Hootsuite:

1. Add the Google Analytics tracking code to your website. For more information, visit the Google Marketing Platform.
2. Create Google Goals for each social media conversion event you want to track. For information, see the Google help article Create, edit, and share goals.
3. If you sell products on your website, set up e-commerce tracking. For information, see the Google help article Set up e-commerce tracking.
4. Add UTM tags to the links in your posts to allow Google Analytics to track the traffic and site activity coming from those links. Make sure the links contain a unique post ID for proper traffic attribution. You can add UTMs manually or when composing a post in Hootsuite. See Apply a UTM parameter to a link.

Gather your Google Analytics configuration information

Make sure you have the right GA permissions and gather all of the information you'll need from your GA account. You'll be asked to select a web property and a view (profile) to connect to Hootsuite. If you have multiple GA4 accounts, you can select all of their properties to connect them to Hootsuite.

Connect your Google Analytics account

Connect your Google Analytics (GA) account to Hootsuite to start analyzing your results. You must be an organization Super Admin, Admin, or a member with the custom organization permission Advanced Analytics settings to connect or remove Google Analytics accounts in Hootsuite. Learn how to assign organization permissions.

1. Make sure you have admin permissions for your GA account.
2. Note the GA web property and view (profile) you want to connect to Hootsuite.
3. Open a separate browser window and sign out of your Google Analytics accounts.
4. Go to Analytics, and then select Analytics settings from the bottom of the navigation.
5. Select Web analytics accounts.
6. Choose the Hootsuite organization you want to connect your GA account to, and then select Google Analytics 4.
7. Follow the prompts to authorize and connect to Hootsuite.

Upon connection, Hootsuite automatically backfills historical Google Analytics data. For GA4 (Google Analytics 4) accounts, the amount of data Hootsuite can backfill depends on the volume of data in your account, and ranges from one month up to one year.

View your Google Analytics data

You can find data from your Google Analytics connection in the following places:

• Advertising performance - Find out how your campaigns, ad sets, and ads drive website visits, page views, or other goal conversions.
• Impact content - Identify which organic posts are driving the most website visits, page views, or other goal conversions.
• ROI analysis - See which organic pages and ad accounts are directing the most traffic to your website.
• Content comparison - Compare campaigns to identify those that took the most customers from social to your website.
• Reports- Create reports with both social and web analytics data to see the results of your social efforts.