How to set up and track utm links using campaign url builder & bit.ly

On our Google Analytics, Social Media and CIM courses we often talk about using Google URL Builder for tracking your campaigns, social media posts and other digital assets. The purpose of tracking is to give you more granular information on how your campaigns are working for you. The URL builder ‘code’ when triggered will appear within your Analytics account and when coupled with goals offers you even more insights.

In this quick tutorial I thought I would just explain how you go about achieving this.

First off we need to identify which page we would like to track. For this example, I’m going to track the “1-day Courses” page.

Copy the URL from the page that you want to track and then head over to Google URL Builder and add in your campaign medium, source and name:

As you add your details in you will see the Google is automatically generating the URL for you below:

Once you have copied this LONG URL, you can head over to a URL shorter like Bit.ly or Goo.gl and paste the URL into it.

Update 2022: you can now click on the “shorten link” on URL Builder (pictured above) and Google will connect automatically to bit.ly to allow you shorten from hereon in within URL builder.

Notice that, in this case, instead of shortening to Bit.ly, it has shortened to mktom.com, which is the custom domain that I have connected to this account. You can also see that you are able to add your own information to describe the domain in a little more detail.

So, the next part is to use the URL. Let’s say that I wanted to use it on LinkedIn, I may construct the post along these lines.

Once published anyone who clicks on the link in the post will send information to Google Analytics. This will allow me to pick up the information on the Real Time or Acquisition reports:

or even campaign level:

Further thoughts 2022.

Google recommends that when you add campaign parameters you should make sure that they are lower case.

Step 2: Open up your LinkedIn app

Now, head over to the LinkedIn app on your mobile phone and click “➕ Post” in the menu on the bottom. The next thing to do is to either select one photo or one image. It looks like you can’t add more than one image or video AND be able to use the URL, text, crop, tag or stickers features.

Step 3: Select the URL/Text/Sticker option

Select the URL option, enter the URL and then add the text that you want. You are now ready to post. In the example below I have added a text hadline and, like Instagram, dragged the URL: and headline to where I want. The headline option gives you the opportunity to select from three style and choose from (minimal) colour options.

And that, in a nutshell, is how you do it. To keep up with the latest tips on digital marketing and find out about how latest courses, please subscribe to our email newsletter.