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Social media is a relatively new phenomenon, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and other social media websites have become an increasingly important source of website traffic. This also creates a massive demand for data related to social media. Where are users coming from? What topics excite them? i.e. How to Track social media activity?

Understand what you want to track

As with most things in life, you can’t conquer what you don’t understand, or at least what you haven’t really thought about. The same is to tracking social media activity.

What is your goal? Do you want to track how people are sharing your website? Do you want to track a specific social media campaign? Or maybe you’re just interested in trends related to a specific meme or social media phenomenon? Each one requires different tools and different focus.

You’re going to focus on traffic statistics if you’re tracking social media website engagement, while if you’re tracking a wider campaign, Twitter response and positive comments might be a more appropriate metric.

Aggregate your analytics

There are a lot of tools for gathering social media information, but no one place has everything you need. You don’t have time to look at all of the tools, so aggregate your analytics information.

There is no single tool that will bring this information together, so you’ll have to do it yourself. Export data into excel, pdf, or email and record all of the information to one area, whichever works best for you. Building a spreadsheet may be best for playing with the numbers. Make it easily accessible.

Analyze and engage

The last step is always the most important one – the actual analysis. It takes years of dedication to the art of web analytics to really understand how each variable affects website traffic and user engagement, but by looking at this data in one place and comparing the information, you will hopefully be able to pick up on trends.

This guide is only how to get started with tracking social media activity. Understand your goals, take the time to find great tools and to understand how each of the social media levers affects traffic and analytics data. But most of all, use the data to engage your audience. You can figure out what they’re looking for tracking social media activity, so be sure to act upon the data once you’ve analyzed it.