TrueSocialMetrics

Resolving issues with reports

Big discrepancies in Twitter shares

Twitter has changed its' public api recently - Twitter shares are collected differently since. Now we don't exclude stats gained by retweets from other peoples' timelines from your reports.

For example, you retweeted Mr. X's tweet to your timeline. And his tweet already has 10 shares gained from Mr. X's followers on his own timeline. These 10 shares will be added to the total count of shares for your account in your reports. Although, technically these shares should be attributed to Mr. X's account and not to your account. But that's the way it works now.

How to get more accurate data?

You can use our Segmentation feature and apply an 'Owned Content' segment to your reports. It will show data only about your own tweets without retweets from other accounts.

analyze posts without retweets

Tumblr shares inaccuracy

This inaccuracy is caused by the way data about followers is collected from Tumblr - the methods are different for your own accounts and accounts you don’t have access to. For your own accounts (authorized access) it's an accurate number from Tumblr api, for competitors' accounts (no authorized access) this is an estimated calculation.

How to get more accurate data?

If you can authorize TrueSocialMetrics to access your company's Tumblr account stats with their login credentials the data about followers would be the most accurate.

  1. Go to Manage sources page and disconnect your Tumblr page.
  2. Then log into this Tumblr account from your browser.
  3. Connect this Tumblr page to TrueSocialMetrics again.

Why are my figures different from what I see in my social media account?

For some social networks (Blog, YouTube, Linkedin, Tumblr, Instagram, Slideshare, Vine, Vimeo) we additionally collect data from other places besides the channel (e.g., Disqus, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg).

You can find out where each metric was collected from at the Diagnostic report:

exporting format settings

Read more about data collection sources here.

Why Facebook metrics in my reports are different from the numbers I see on my Facebook page?

Here's a list of reasons that may cause data discrepancies for Facebook stats in your reports:

  • We refresh data once in 24 hours. This may cause temporary discrepancies.

  • When you have some specific geo-targeting settings applied to your posts which makes them invisible from Oregon, US (where our servers are located) or makes them private (invisible to non-authorized users or people who don't follow you). In that case TrueSocialMetrics will not be able to see these posts and include them in the reports.

  • When someone makes a private Share or Like. You won't see these private social interactions in your reports, because Facebook API doesn't provide information about such activities due to privacy reasons. But the % of such private interactions are usually really low, so it won't skew the analytics so badly.

  • Plus to that, data discrepancies with FB Insights may be caused by the different method of reporting between FB Insights and True. True ties up metrics individually to each Post created in selected date range, while FB Insights ties up metrics to selected Date Range in bulk. For example, we have selected March 2015 and we have only Post A and Post B created in March. TrueSocialMetrics will report only Likes, Shares, Comments that belong to Post A and Post B. But FB Insights will show all Likes, Shares, Comments made in March even if they belong to posts that were made in February or January (out of selected date range).

    We decided to report metrics differently than Facebook because if we tie up metrics to each individual post we can credit success to each post and find out what content your audience likes and what doesn’t. While reporting the bulk number of Likes for selected date range isn’t effective at all in telling us what happened and why.

Read more about data collection sources here.

Why LinkedIn metrics in my reports are different from the numbers I see on my LinkedIn company page?

LinkedIn has no full api for Сompany pages activity. So we use two apis: the first one provides only the links you post on company page updates and the second - the amount of each link’s reshares on LinkedIn.

For example: you’ve shared a link http://domain.com/mypost on your company page, then 2 people reshared this link and 3 other people posted the same link on their pages (not shared your link, but posted the same link by themselves). As a result:

  • Internal Linkedin statistics shows: 2 shares.
  • TrueSocialMetrics dashboard shows: 2+3 = 5 shares.

In other words, Linkedin shares are all appearances of your link on Linkedin, no matter how it was shared: by users from your company page update or posted by users themselves (e.g. directly from your site).

How to get more accurate results:

You can get an accurate number of LinkedIn shares by creating unique links with one of these methods:

  1. Use Google Url Builder to tag your links.
  2. Use url shortage services like http://goo.gl. It will generate a unique short link for you.
  3. Manually add any parameter to the url, e.g. ?LinkedIn.
    Example: You have a link http://sample.com/page, then you add a parameter ?LinkedIn. Now you have a unique link: http://my.com/some/page?LinkedIn

Read about pros and cons of each method here.

Why isn't my Economic Value calculating?

There are several possible reasons to check for:

  1. Make sure you have connected correct Google Analytics Account, Property and View at your TrueSocialMetrics account Settings.
  2. Be sure that you have set up Goal Values for your Goals in Google Analytics more than 48 hours before the current date (Goals can't be tracked retroactively).
  3. Check if visitors from social networks have completed some Goals on your site during report period.

To check it you can create a Custom Report in your Google Analytics account using 'Social network' as a dimension and 'Per session goal value' as a metric (you can import this report into your GA account using this link: https://www.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=Jmx-2k58QtOKGpeKgoCE9w) And make sure you select the same date range in Google Analytics and TrueSocialMetrics.

​If this report will show $0 for Per Session Goal Value for visits from Social Networks, than it would be the reason Economic value is appearing as "0" in your TrueSocialMetrics reports.

exporting format settings

Why is my Followers report blank and I don't see any numbers?

We need at least a week (starting from the day you have connected your social media page) to collect the data and build this report.

Because the Number of Followers is the only metric that can't be calculated retroactively: social networks' APIs don't provide this data. We can calculate current values for the Followers metric only starting from the day you have connected your social media page to TrueSocialMetrics and onwards. For the historical data about Followers (before the day of the connection) we use an Interpolation technique - building the trend for the past values based on the present values of the Number of Followers.

How to fix this: You can import the file with your historical data for the Number of Followers into your True account (e.g. if you used different analysis software before or have just stored your old reports with historical data). And you’ll enjoy an uninterrupted historical trend of Followers growth.

import followers data

When I export reports to CSV format I've got 'commas' as separators, how do I change it to 'dots'?

When you export reports to CSV format, be default, the data will be separated by 'commas', but you can change the settings to make data separated by 'dots'. Depending on the software you use to process your CSV exported reports it will be more convenient to select one of the numbers format types: 'dots' or 'commas'.

To change the numbers format to 'dots' go to Settings -> Export Format page under Profile tab:

exporting format settings

Why my reports show only 1 follower for YouTube?

When you see only 1 YouTube follower in your TrueSocialMetrics reports the most common reason for that is your YouTube account settings, when it has option hiddenSubscriberCount activated. This option doesn't allow to retrieve number of followers from YouTube public api.

To fix this issue I’d recommend to disactivate this option for your account:

  1. Go to your YouTube channel page. Click on 'Settings'.

YouTube settings

  1. Go to ‘Advanced settings'.

YouTube Advanced Settings

  1. In the section 'Subscriber counts' select the option 'Display the nubmer of people subscribed to my channel'.

YouTube Settings

Why my reports show wierd number of followers for Google Plus?

The most common reason is your Google Plus account security permision - when you don't allow others to see 'people in your circles'. This doesn't allow to retrieve number of followers from your Google Plus and our reports may show 'Views' instead of ‘People in your circles’ as your Number of Followers.

To fix that:

  1. Go to your Google plus page. Click on 'Settings'.
  2. Go to ‘Profile' section.
  3. Under 'Who can see the "people in your circles" section in your profile' select the option 'Public'.

Google Plus account Settings