Social networks report

Where to find the Social networks report

In the side menu, click "Acquisition".

A submenu opens. Choose "Social networks" there.

The Social networks report opens.

When you should check here

Social media runs fast, this report does not have to. Four occasions where the look pays off:

• Two to three days after a post. You shared something on LinkedIn or uploaded a reel. Now you see whether the attention turned into visitors. Checking earlier does little, checking later and the trail goes cold.
• When you wonder whether a platform is still worth it. Every channel costs you time every week. Here you see what comes back. Sometimes the answer is uncomfortably clear.
• When your visitor numbers climb for no obvious reason. A spike in the visitors overview with nothing to explain it? Often somebody shared your content without you knowing. Here you find the source.
• At your monthly walk-through. A channel that fades over the course of weeks does not catch your eye day to day. In the list it does.

The table

The table is the core of the report. Every row is a network (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Instagram, or TikTok, for example) that has sent you visitors.

In the top right of the box you choose between two views:

• Table (default). The lean overview with the two most important figures.
• Detailed table. The same list, but with every detail value about the quality of the visitors.

Table (simple)

Detailed table

Four additional columns come in here. They tell you whether these are good visitors:

Two columns decide it. The visits tell you how many came. The bounce rate tells you whether it was worth it. Only together do they add up to a verdict. 500 visitors, 490 of whom are gone right away, bring you about as much as 10 visitors. The other way around, a platform with 50 attentive visitors can be your most valuable channel, even though it sits at the very bottom of the list.

With social media you can be a little more forgiving than with other sources. Somebody who clicks while scrolling, half distracted, is naturally more fleeting than somebody who deliberately follows a link in a trade article. So compare the networks with each other, not with your best source from the rest of the web.

What you can set here

• Sorting: click a column heading to sort ascending or descending.
• Entries per page: at the bottom you choose how many rows are shown (10, 25, 50, or All).
• Paging: with long lists, you page through at the bottom.

The period being analyzed always follows the date selection at the top. Set a different period there, and the entire report adjusts immediately.

When there is nothing

If no visit from social networks is available in the selected period, the note "No visits from social networks in the selected period yet." appears. That is not an error. It simply means nobody found their way to you through a social network during that time.

Why there is less here than in your platform statistics

Almost everybody makes this observation, and it regularly causes doubt: LinkedIn reports 40 clicks, here you see 22 visits. Both numbers are correct, they just do not measure the same thing.

• A click is not a visit yet. Somebody who quits halfway because the connection stutters or they changed their mind counts as a click at the platform and as nobody with you.
• Some apps do not reveal where they came from. When a network opens your link in its built-in browser, the information about where the visitor came from sometimes gets lost. That visit then does not show up here but under "Direct". So it is visible, just in a different place.
• Shared links travel on. Somebody sends your post to three colleagues by chat or email. Their visits also turn up under "Direct", even though your post was the origin.

The detail view

Click any row in the table. The detail view slides in from the right and shows you everything about that one network. A click on the X closes the window again.

In the detail view you see:

Statistics

Four metrics about this network:

Trend

A small curve shows how the visits from this network developed over time. That way you see whether a post is having a fresh effect right now or whether things are quieting down again. If there is nothing, a "—" appears.

This curve tells you something about social media that no metric states as clearly: the effect is short. A post brings its spike on the first and second day, after that, it flattens out, no matter how good it was. Anyone who wants a steady stream of visitors has to publish steadily. A good website still works for you months later, a good post works for two days.

Most visited entry pages

Which page of your website the visitors from this network landed on first. The top 5, with the visit count and a small bar for comparison. That way you see which of your pages gets the most attention through this network. If there is no data: "No entry pages in the selected period."

Most visited follow-up pages

Where the visitors clicked next. The top 5 of the pages they visited after the entry page. That tells you whether the visitors are really looking around or leaving again right away. If there is no data: "No follow-up pages in the selected period."

Read the two lists as the beginning and the end of a short story. The top one says where the visitor came in, the bottom one where they went. If the path leads from your offer page onward to the contact form, your post did exactly what it was supposed to. But if the bottom list stays empty, the visit was a dead end. That is no disgrace, but it is an assignment: this entry page is missing the next step.

Devices

A small column chart shows which devices these visitors were using: desktop (computer), mobile (phone), tablet and others. If there is no data: "No device data in the selected period."

With social networks in particular, this is often especially revealing, because a great many visitors use social media on their phone. If an important platform shows mostly mobile, then the success of that channel is decided on a small screen. In that case, check the entry page on your own phone before you start doubting the platform.

Subdomains

This section is something special that many other analytics tools do not show this way. Instead of simply writing "Facebook", Trustlytics shows you where inside the network the visitors came from. The top 5 with visit count and bars. A few examples from Facebook:

• m.facebook.com: somebody clicked through the mobile Facebook browser.
• l.facebook.com: somebody came through a shared link.
• lm.facebook.com: somebody clicked through Facebook Messenger.

That way you see how and where your content actually gets shared and clicked. If there is no data: "No subdomain data in the selected period."

What this is good for: if a large part comes through Messenger, your content is being passed along privately instead of shared publicly. That looks like very little in the app, because hardly anybody comments underneath, but it is an excellent sign. Somebody who sends a thing to a friend means it more seriously than somebody who just taps a heart.

Aha moments you will recognize

A few patterns you will run into sooner or later:

• The platform you work on the most delivers the least. Uncomfortable, but useful. Usually it is the one you have been on the longest and where the most habit is baked in.
• A channel you barely tend to brings good visitors. Few visits, but a long visit duration and follow-up pages. That is a hint about where your actual audience sits. Give it deliberate attention for a few weeks and then look again.
• The entry page is not your home page but an old post. Then something of yours is making the rounds that you had long forgotten. A good moment to freshen up that content instead of writing something new.
• Over 90 percent mobile. With social media, that is not the exception, it is the rule. So your entry pages have to work on a phone, not on the screen you built them on.

What is in it for me?

Social media likes to measure itself in numbers that do nobody any good. This report counts in visitors:

• You learn what is left of your work. Not reach, not impressions, but people who actually landed on your site.
• You see volume and quality separately. Plenty of clicks are quick to get. Visitors who stay are not. Visit duration and bounce rate separate the one from the other.
• You can shift time instead of adding it. Your day does not get more hours when a new channel comes along. Here you see which one is worth it.
• You see which content pulls on which platform. The entry pages give it away. After that, you place topics deliberately where they land.

The most honest benefit, though, is a different one: this report keeps you from confusing effort with effect. Running four channels half-heartedly costs more energy than running one properly, and it usually brings less. Once you see in black and white which channel carries you, that decision gets easy.

Common questions

Why do I not see a network that I use?
It only appears once somebody has actually clicked through to your website from there. So you can post diligently without anything turning up here, as long as nobody clicks the link.

Can I see which individual post brought the visitors?
Not in this report, here the counting happens per network and not per post. But it is possible: add a tag to the link in your post. You build the right link in a few clicks with the campaign URL builder. The visit then appears in the Campaigns report, under the name you gave it yourself. That is worth doing for anything that matters to you: a campaign, an invitation, a new page. If you run several channels, though, adding this by hand gets tedious fast, and that is exactly where mistakes happen. One typo in the tag and the post shows up later under the wrong name. For that case we built zappzy, our own tool for planning and publishing social media posts. It is a separate product and is not required for Trustlytics. But anyone who wants a planning tool for social media anyway is welcome to take a look.

My platform reports more clicks than the visits shown here. Who is right?
Both. A click that breaks off still counts at the platform. And when the app opens your link in its built-in browser, the information about where the visitor came from sometimes gets lost, in which case the visit lands under "Direct" instead of here. There is a full explanation further up in the section about this difference.

Why does Facebook sometimes show "m.", "l." or "lm." in front?
You only see that in the detail view under "Subdomains". It shows which route inside the network the visitors took (mobile browser, shared link, Messenger). In the main table all these routes are bundled into a single "Facebook" so the overview stays clean.

Why is my report almost empty at the beginning?
The report fills up as soon as visitors come to you through social networks. At the beginning, or with little social media activity, that can take a few days.

A network sends me a lot of bouncers. What do I do about it?
First take a look at what you linked to there and where the click leads. Often the post promises something different from what the visitor finds with you. Bring the two closer together, and the visitors stay longer as well. And look at the entry page on your own phone, because that is exactly where most social media visitors land.

What is a normal bounce rate for social media?
Higher than for your other sources, and you can factor that in. Somebody who clicks on impulse while scrolling also decides on impulse to leave again. So do not set a fixed target value, compare your networks with each other and watch whether it gets better over the weeks.