Learn how to quickly enable your Google Analytics UTM parameters to increase Social Media ROI one stat at a time. See the original post at: http://blog.dlvr.it/2014/09/auto-enable-google-analytics-utm-tracking-codes-to-social-media-posts/

1. How to Auto Enable Google Analytics UTM Tracking
Code for Social Media
blog.dlvr.it/2014/09/auto-enable-google-analytics-utm-tracking-codes-to-social-media-posts/
Bill Flitter
(#TechTalkThursday) If you’re a parent, do you ever ask yourself “Am doing this
right?” I know I do. There are so many variables and influences that our children
are exposed to. If you believe in the theory that your child’s personality is set by
the time they are six, then you have just a few short years to have the
greatest impact on your child’s life. You see glimpses of your hard work as they
mature and interact with friends and family but the ultimate test is when you set
them free to be responsible adults. Until then, we cross our fingers and hope for
the best.
Thank goodness social media isn’t that hard. You can get instant feedback on
your hard work. However, if you look at your Google Analytics data it can be
overwhelming. There are so many variables to review and things you can adjust to
get your desired results.
Focus on One Stat That Matters

2. I am sure you’ve heard the phrase “Big Data.” If you are a small business, big
data can sound scary. The last thing you need is more data! You just want results,
right?
When monitoring our own social media progress, we like lean data. We identify
one or two metrics that help increase our ROI. We focus on those over a period of
time and optimize our blog and social media for that one stat. For example, it could
be simply to ‘increase clicks from twitter by 10% in 10 days’ or ‘increase
conversions from our blog by 20%’.
If you are using dlvr.it to share content to social media, it’s easy to see the
impact you are making in your third party analytics package. We’ll be
sharing examples from Google Analytics below.
Enabling Google Analytics UTM Parameters in dlvr.it
Google uses what they call UTM parameters. UTM parameters is the way you
track the performance of a custom campaign from the origination point (tweet,
email or website). A link with a UTM parameter looks like this:
http://yourdomain.com/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=
[desttype]&utm_campaign=NAME
When users click one of the custom links, the unique parameters are sent to your
Google Analytics account. This allows you to quickly identify the URLs that are
most effective in attracting users to your content. In Google Analytics, these codes
can be found under “Traffic Sources.”
Google created a UTM builder to help you easily add UTM parameters to any
URL. We’ve recreated the Google UTM builder inside of dlvr.it. Fortunately, we’ve
also automated the process for you. In one click, a basic UTM structure appears.
You can customize the UTM code depending on your needs. dlvr.it automatically
fills in the social network in which your update appeared.

3. Let’s take a look at a few scenarios with different objectives. There are many UTM
tracking combinations to string together depending upon the one lean metric that
matters to you.
Social Media ROI Objective UTM Code Set-up
I want to track traffic across all
utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=[desttype]
my social networks
I have several Twitter
accounts. I want to show traffic
patterns from specific
accounts
utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=
[destname]

4. I want to see how a specific
content from a feed
performs on each specific
social network
utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=
[destname]&utm_content=[sourcename]
I am running a specific
promotion. I want to attach a
static name to each update.
utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=
[desttype]&utm_campaign=NAME
For further help on using dlvr.it to integrate with your web analytics, here are
the complete instructions for enabling tracking parameters to links shared in social
media.
NOTE: You can successfully add any third party unique link append parameters to
URLs using dlvr.it’s tracking tool.
When you review your data in Google Analytics, you will see something similar
to the image below. In this example, the Source is dlvr.it and the Medium is Twitter.
Now it’s your turn. Determine your one lean metric for the next 60 days and put all
your effort into optimizing for success.