Follow these steps in Google Analytics so setup social media marketing filters:

1. Click on ‘edit’ to the right of your website profile on the main login screen.
2. Click on ‘Add Filter’ in the ‘Filters’ section on the next screen.
3. Name the filter something like ‘Social Media Grouping’
4. Select ‘Custom filter’ as the ‘filter type’
5. Select ‘Advanced’ from the radio button options list
6. *In ‘Field A -> Extract A’ select ‘Campaign Source and enter the social media marketing sites you want to capture in the text box, see below for more information
7. ~In ‘Output To -> Constructor’ select ‘Campaign Medium’ or ‘Campaign Name’ and enter ‘social’ in the text box, see below for more information
8. Leave the rest of the ‘yes/no’ boxes as-is and save the filter
9. You will have to wait 24 hours to start seeing the traffic being filter in the manner you just setup

* Note: for convenience sake you can copy paste this text to add some of the most prominent social type sites on the internet to your filter: twitter\.com|facebook\.com|myspace\.com|flickr\.com|linkedin\.com|WordPress\.com|blogspot\.com|youtube\.com|stumbleupon\.com

~Note: this will change the ‘campaign medium’ from ‘referral’ to ‘social’. There is one drawback to this as you will not be able to see the referring website url from traffic coming from your tagged social media marketing websites anymore. There is an alternative to this. Instead of marking the campaign medium as ‘social’ you can mark the ‘campaign name’ as social. Then to see your social traffic you will have to go to ‘traffic sources’ -> ‘referring sites’ -> select a site -> filter by ‘campaign name’ to see your ‘social’ traffic.

Screenshot 1: Setting up the filter

Google Analytics Social Filter (above)

Screenshot 2: Viewing Social Site Traffic

Social Filter Website Traffic Screen

There is something you can utilize right now on Facebook without actually sending them a dime that can be of great assistance to your marketing efforts online, offline, etc.  When you create an ad you can choose different options of who you want to target your ads to on Facebook.   Through process of elimination you can gain some valuable insights of your target audience through this simple system.  For example – lets say you are a camping gear manufacturer and you think hikers are usually interested in camping as well – you are considering advertising in a hiking magazine for your company.  You could narrow your search down to those who are interested in hiking then AND camping with this method.  The results are as follows:

47,469,140  – Total U.S. Facebook users
980,840 – Those who have an interest in camping
1,036,800 – Those who have an interest in hiking
1,719,120 – Those who have an interest in hiking AND/OR camping
980,840 + 1,036,800 = 2,017,640 – Those who have an interest in hiking OR camping (including DUPLICATES)
2,017,640 – 1,719,120 = 298,520 – Those who have an interest in hiking AND camping
So about 30% of campers have expressed an interest in hiking as well on facebook.

You can also take this down to a much more simple level by simply finding things such as if males or females are more interested in parenting, if there are more dave matthews band fans in Georgia or California, if engaged people are more likely to be interested in photography, if more college graduates are associated with coke or pepsi, and the list goes on and on.

Of course this data is not taking into consideration the entire world but it seems to be a fairly good sampling, 47 million users in the U.S. alone is very impressive. If you have had experience with Facebook advertising I would love to hear your comments.