This post will provide a quick overview on UTM parameters and how to use them to track blog post activity. In this blog on teaching social media analytics I have been describing a class project whereby students link Google Analytics to their WordPress blog and then track the results as they promote the blog on social media each week. (Zahay-Blatz, 2021). The students are instructed for the weekly assignments to change the blog and emphasize pictures and videos one particular week, long term content the next, for example, and track the results of these changes in Google Analytics. The students promote the blog on social media and also use email marketing to gain readership. A good next step in teaching this material is to see if the students wish to try UTM tags, or parameters, to track and analyze blog activity.
What Are UTM Parameters?
UTM Parameters are an additional way of tracking traffic to a blog using Google Analytics. Essentially, “UTM parameters are short text codes that you add to URLs (or links) to help you track the performance of webpage or campaign.” (Newberry, 2021). The parameters can be handy to help aggregate and report on traffic. UTM is short for Urchin Tracking Modules because they were created by Urchin Software, which was acquired by Google when it was building Google Analytics. The parameters help identify and organize traffic and are useful in attribution analysis for those interested tracking conversions (Kanani, 2020).
What are the Five UTM Parameters?
There are five parameters that can be used to track traffic. These parameters can be pointed to a website, which means they can also be pointed to a blog. Stanis (2019). There are five tags that can be put at the end of the URL for a blog that then show up in Google Analytics. (Munroe, 2021).
The five parameters, or tags, are:
- utm_source: facebook, twitter or other source driving traffic
- utm_medium: the type of channel, cpc, social, paid social
- utm_campaign: the name of the campaign
- utm_term: specific keywords or phrases
- utm_content: different ad content such as video or text ad
For blog attribution in this project the first three tags are relevant in terms of tracking traffic from a particular social media network and channel and naming the campaign. The links to the blog posts below provide a good tutorial on how the process works. There is more detail for those who wish to dive into the details of UTM tag creation and reporting.
How Are the Parameters Created?
Fortunately, there are several UTM generators available for marketing campaigns, most notably from Google Analytics, that make the process a bit easier. I use Bitly as a URL to shorten my blog URLs and recently noticed the option to use UTM parameters in that tool. Figure 1 shows the results of using UTM generator in Bitly to create UTM tags for this blog post. It seems that Bitly is testing using UTM parameters in its URL shortening tool, so I took advantage of that capability. The tags show up after each parameter. I am looking to track Facebook traffic from organic social sources and named the campaign UTM_Post.
Figure 1: UTM Parameters help track blog traffic.
The tags become part of the URL when entered the URL and filled out the parameters on bitly. It will be interesting to see how the traffic is tracked over the coming weeks. I will be able to report on source medium and campaign name to see these results.(Digital Marketing Extreme, 2021).
Please let me know if you have any other comments or suggestions on this post. I will return to this topic of teaching social media analytics and to this blog when next I teach this class. Until then, please follow updates and tips on teaching digital marketing on my Zahay Teaches Digital (Marketing) blog.
References
Digital Marketing Extreme (2021). Retrieved from: https://digitalmarketingextreme.com/how-to/how-to-see-utm-parameters-in-google-analytics-reports/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Kanani, A. (September 25, 2020). [CXL Blog Post]. UTM Parameters: A Complete Guide for Traffic Attribution. https://cxl.com/blog/utm-parameters/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Munroe, M., (2021). [Hubspot Blog Post]. Understanding the Basics of UTM Parameters https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/understanding-basics-utm-parameters?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Newberry, C. (May 3, 2021). [Hootsuite Blog Post]. How to Use UTM Parameters to Track Social Media Success. https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-utm-parameters/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Stanis, J. (October 21, 2019). [Weidert Blog Post]. What is UTM Code and How to use it. https://www.weidert.com/blog/what-is-utm-code
Zahay-Blatz, D. (January 9, 2021). [Blog post]. One Secret to Teaching Social Media Analytics (A Blog Project). https://sites.stedwards.edu/dblatz/2021/01/08/secrets/