You’ve finally collaborated with a number of influencers who are diverting their audiences to your site, getting you the acknowledgement you deserve at last… But how exactly do you know which influencer is bringing you the most traffic?

You take a look at Google analytics under Source/Medium and all you see is (direct) / (none). Giving you no indication whatsoever of where your traffic has come from. What you really want, is to track how much traffic can be directly attributed to a specific third-party.

 

 

That’s where UTM parameters come in…

By adding specific tags to your URL, whenever someone clicks on that URL, those tags are immediately sent to Google analytics to be tracked.

What UTM (Urchin Tracking Module)parameters do, is allow you to dig deeper to see the specific source your traffic has derived from. By giving each influencer a unique link you can uncover individually how each influencer’s content for your brand is performing. You want to be able to distinguish between the traffic brought by each individual influencer. To then identify which collaboration was most effective and which one failed to bring in any traffic, which will be useful for future collaborations.

 

What A UTM Looks like

Normal URL:  https://yourwebsite.com/your-page/
URL with UTM: https://yourwebsite.com/yourpage? utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=jewlscollab&utm_content=jessica

 

The tags included in this example help identify the exact source:

Source: Identify the actual source, where the traffic has come from.
Medium: Whether it was referral, breaking it down into paid and organic traffic
Campaign: Name of your campaign
Campaign content: Name of creator

 

This way, you can see in Google Analytics the bucket of all Facebook traffic, in an overall glance. You can then drill down to identify the specific campaign, and finally drill down further into each influencer’s performance by adding their name.

Read on to find out how to get your UTM URL. You would want to include the name of the influencer in each URL. It’s most common and most appropriate to add their name in the UTM under campaign name.

 

 

How to include UTM links on posts

 

Social media

 URLs which include UTM parameters are usually quite long, so it’s best you shorten them. It’s worth noting that people are more comfortable clicking on smaller links.

 

Blog posts

Rather than the link be visible. In blog posts it’s best that influencers hide the link and instead use a hyperlink. This is especially useful for affiliates, as web users are becoming more aware of how affiliates work, getting commission on the sales and traffic they bring in, making more people may be inclined avoid clicking on links in which they know can be tracked directly to them. Meaning that you’ll lose traffic,  affiliates lose on  commission, and influencers lose potential future collaborations with you.

 

 

GETTING YOUR UTM PARAMETER

 

The easiest way to get a UTM parameter is through Google Analytics URL Builder

 

1. Enter your website URL and fill in the details below.

Campaign source (utm_source)  Required parameter to identify the source of your traffic such as: search engine, newsletter, or other referral.

Campaign Medium (utm_medium) Required parameter to identify the medium the link was used upon such as: email, CPC, or other method of sharing

Campaign Name (utm_campaign) Used to identify a specific product promotion or strategic campaign

Campaign Content (utm_content) Use utm_content to differentiate ads or links that point to the same URL.

 

2. Once you’ve done that, you can copy the link and use it as it is, but as it’s quite long we suggest you paste it into TinyURL to shorten it.

 

Tracking your Traffic

To view how much traffic the UTM link is bringing in, sign into your Google Analytics account click on Traffic Sources > Source/Medium  or Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium

Check out how to track your conversions here