How Solar Businesses Can Track Social Media Success With UTM Parameters

UTM parameters are tags you add to URLs to track your campaigns more accurately. When someone clicks a link with UTM parameters, the tags are sent back to Google Analytics and tracked. With UTM parameters, you can tag all your links to test the efficacy of your campaigns and identify the best ways to drive visitors to your website.

Why it’s important

UTM parameters are important for your social media success. It can help you understand how your visitors connect with your website and helps you measure the value of your social media work.

Here's an example of a URL with UTM parameters:

XEN Blog Post URL without parameters:

https://www.xensolar.com.au/blog/complete-guide-to-using-google-my-business-in-your-solar-business

XEN Blog Post URL with parameters:

https://www.xensolar.com.au/blog/complete-guide-to-using-google-my-business-in-your-solar-business?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=organic%20social&utm_campaign=blog%20post

Information on UTM Parameters

Let's look at a detailed explanation of each of the campaign parameters. Here are the five fields you need to fill out.

• The Campaign Source is the source where the traffic is coming from. It could be a website, a newsletter and so on. 
• The Campaign Medium is used to identify a medium like cost-per-click, affiliate, and email.
• A Campaign Name is used for keyword analysis. It can help identify a specific product promotion or a strategic campaign. 
• The Campaign term is used for paid search. You can use it to track the keywords for the ad.
• Campaign Content is used for A/B testing and content-targeted ads. It passes details about your ad and you can use it to differentiate links that point to the same URL.

How to implement UTM parameters for social posts

When you are planning to share a link to your site via your social channels, we recommend adding UTM parameters to that link, so you can track the results and activity that come from that social post.

Here's how to add UTM parameters to a link you want to share on social:

1. Go to Google’s Campaign Builder tool: https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
2. Copy the URL of the link you will be sharing in the social post.
3. Paste the URL to the Campaign URL Builder.
4. We recommend using these settings for the rest of the fields:

• Campaign Source: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or Pinterest, etc.
• Campaign Medium: social or organic social.
• Campaign Name: a short name or description of what the post is about or what campaign it is associated with.
• eg install images, news, social, or blog post.

5. Copy the generated campaign URL, and paste this into your social post.

UTM parameters give valuable perceptions to your traffic. If you're interested to know more or need help with efficient management of all your social media platforms, XEN Solar is here to help! Contact us today.