UTM parameters for social media, explained simply

UTM parameters are tags added to a link so your website analytics know where a visitor came from. Without them, many visits from social apps show up as direct traffic.

The three you need

• utm_source: the network, such as linkedin or bluesky.
• utm_medium: the type of traffic, for example social.
• utm_campaign: the campaign or theme, such as spring_launch.

Two more are optional: utm_content to tell two posts apart, and utm_term for keywords.

Keep the names clean

• Use lowercase only. LinkedIn and linkedin count as two sources in most analytics tools.
• Use underscores, not spaces.
• Write the scheme down and share it with your team.

Short links

Long tagged links look messy in a post. A short link hides the tags and lets you count clicks even on networks that report no link clicks of their own.

In SocialBat you can turn on UTM tags per workspace with tokens such as {network}, and every link in a post becomes a short link on publish, so clicks are counted per post and per network. You can also build a single tagged link with the free UTM builder.