How to Track Social Media in Google Analytics 4

Tracking your social media performance in Google Analytics 4 can feel like you’re trying to connect the dots in the dark. You know your social efforts are driving traffic, but proving which platforms deliver real results - conversions, leads, and sales - is another story. We're going to clear that up and show you exactly how to find, analyze, and visualize your social media data in GA4.

This tutorial will walk you through finding the standard social media reports, using UTM parameters for more granular tracking, analyzing conversions from specific platforms, and even building a simple, custom social media dashboard.

How GA4 Automatically Tracks Social Media Traffic

The good news is that GA4 does some of the initial work for you. It uses a feature called "Default Channel Groupings" to automatically sort your incoming traffic into buckets like "Organic Search," "Direct," "Referral," and, most importantly for us, "Organic Social" and "Paid Social."

How does it know? GA4 maintains a list of popular social media domains (like facebook.com, twitter.com, linkedin.com, etc.). When a visitor clicks a link from one of these sites and lands on your website, GA4 checks the referring URL. If it matches a known social platform, it's automatically categorized as social traffic.

• Organic Social: This is traffic from unpaid links on social media profiles, posts, and shares.
• Paid Social: This is traffic from your paid advertising campaigns on social platforms, provided you're using proper UTM tracking (more on that in a bit).

This automatic sorting is a great starting point, but to get real insights, you need to know where to find these reports and how to dig deeper.

Finding Your Social Media Traffic Reports in GA4

Let's find out which social platforms are sending you visitors. The primary place you'll live for this information is the Traffic acquisition report.

Step 1: Navigate to the Traffic Acquisition Report

In your GA4 property, go to the left-hand navigation menu and follow this path:

Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition

This report shows you where your website visitors are coming from, neatly organized by the default channel groupings we just discussed.

Step 2: Filter the Report for Social Media Channels

Initially, you'll see a table with all your traffic channels mixed together. You can quickly isolate your social traffic by using the search/filter box directly above the data table.

Type "Social" into the box. This will filter the report to show only rows containing the word "Social," meaning you'll see metrics for Organic Social and Paid Social.

Step 3: Add a Secondary Dimension for Specific Platforms

Knowing that "Organic Social" brought you 5,000 users is useful, but it doesn't tell you if those users came from Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Twitter. To see the specific platforms, you need to add a secondary dimension.

1. Click the small blue plus sign ("+") next to the "Session default channel group" column header.
2. In the dropdown menu, search for and select "Session source / medium."

The report will now update to show a new column breaking down each channel grouping by its source. Under "Organic Social," you'll see individual platforms like facebook.com, t.co (Twitter), linkedin.com, and others responsible for sending you that traffic.

Use UTM Parameters for Granular Campaign Tracking

GA4's default tracking is great for a general overview, but it can't tell you the difference between a link in your Instagram bio, a link in a specific Instagram Story, and a paid Facebook ad campaign. To GA4, it all might just look like "instagram.com" traffic.

This is where UTM parameters become your best friend. UTMs are simple tags you add to the end of your URLs to give Google Analytics specific information about each link. They don’t change the destination page, but they feed valuable data directly into your reports.

Here are the key UTM parameters:

• utm_source: Identifies where the traffic is coming from (e.g., facebook, linkedin).
• utm_medium: The marketing medium or channel (e.g., cpc for paid ads, social for links in profiles).
• utm_campaign: The name of your specific campaign (e.g., summer_sale_2024, q4_lead_gen).
• utm_content: Differentiates between links pointing to the same URL, useful for A/B testing (e.g., video_ad vs. image_ad).
• utm_term: Used to identify paid keywords, less common for social media tracking.

Example in Action:

Imagine you're running a paid ad on Facebook for a new product. Instead of using the link https://www.yourstore.com/new-product, you would use a tagged URL:

https://www.yourstore.com/new-product?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=new_product_launch&utm_content=blue_header_ad

Now, when someone clicks this link, GA4 will record not just that they came from Facebook, but that they came specifically from your paid "new_product_launch" campaign and clicked on the "blue_header_ad" creative. This level of detail allows you to accurately measure ROI for every single social media effort.

You can create these URLs manually or use Google's Campaign URL Builder to make it simple and error-free.

How to Track Social Media Conversions

Getting traffic from social media is just the first step. The real goal is to see if that traffic is turning into valuable actions, like sales, sign-ups, or demo requests. In GA4, these actions are tracked as conversions.

Assuming you've already configured key events (like purchase, generate_lead, or sign_up) as conversions in GA4, seeing which social channels drive them is straightforward.

1. Return to the same Traffic acquisition report.
2. Add the Session source / medium secondary dimension as we did before.
3. Scroll the table to the right until you find the Conversions column.

By default, this column shows the total for all conversion events. To isolate a specific one - like purchase - click the dropdown arrow on the "Conversions" column and select the conversion event you want to analyze.

Now you can connect the dots completely. You might discover that while Facebook sends the most traffic, LinkedIn is where all your "demo request" conversions come from. This is the kind of insight that helps you decide where to invest your time and budget.

Build a Custom Social Media Dashboard in GA4's Explorations

The standard reports are helpful, but what if you want a clean, dedicated dashboard for social media that only shows what you and your team care about? That’s what Exploration reports are for.

Here’s how to build a basic social media performance report from scratch:

1. In the left-hand navigation, click Explore and select Blank exploration.
2. Give your report a name, like "Social Media Performance Dashboard."
3. In the "Variables" column on the left, you need to import the dimensions and metrics you'll use:
4. Now, in the "Tab Settings" column, build your report:
5. Finally, filter for social media traffic:

Voila! You now have a clean, custom-built table on the right that shows all your organic social media sources alongside the key metrics you chose. This report is saved in your Explorations and you can come back to it anytime to see the latest performance data without having to repeat all the steps and filter adjustments you make in standard reports.

Final Thoughts

By following these steps, you can move beyond simple traffic numbers and truly understand the impact of your social media strategy. You now know how to locate and filter GA4's default reports, track granular campaign data with UTMs, measure conversions from each platform, and build a dedicated dashboard to keep an eye on your most important metrics.

We know that even with GA4's powerful tools, building reports and digging for insights still takes time and a lot of clicks. That’s why we built Graphed. Instead of navigating menus and building custom reports step-by-step, you can simply ask for what you need in plain English - like, "Compare conversions from Facebook and LinkedIn last month" or "Build me a dashboard showing my top-performing social campaigns." We connect directly to your data sources, including Google Analytics, and give you the answers and live dashboards you need in seconds, letting you get back to strategy instead of reporting.