Track Social Media Effectiveness with Customized Links

One of the reasons that many business owners are reluctant to become involved with social media is that it is so hard to track the effectiveness of your campaigns. Trying to figure out which social media channels are most effective for your business can be difficult when you don’t know, exactly, where the links are coming from.

If you are interested in better traffic tracking, you can make use of customized links to help you improve your analysis. Not only is it possible to create custom links for different social media channels, but it is also possible to create custom links for a specific campaign that you are running. You can create custom URLs that allow you to measure traffic from certain types of ads on certain blogs, as well as posts on different social media channels.

Where Can You Build Customized Links?

There are plenty of tools that allow you to create your own custom links. Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools for creating custom links.  Other tools, like HootSuite, also allow you to set customized URL parameters to improve your ability to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts. Some tools are free, while others require some sort of paid subscription to access the ability to customize links.

You will need to consider your own needs, and the use you plan to make of customized URLs, before you decide whether or not to use a free option. Many paid tools that allow you to create customized links come with free trials, so you can try the service and measure its effectiveness against free options. Then, choose which appears to work best for you.

Coordinate Your Efforts

When tracking the effectiveness of your social media efforts, you do need to make sure that you are including the right link with the right source. If you are tracking the effectiveness of your LinkedIn “share” button, it needs to have the right code, with the right custom URL. Whether you are tracking traffic from your RSS feed, a banner campaign on various web sites, or your Twitter account, you need to make sure that you have the right URL paired with the right traffic source.

Double-check your custom link, as well as any code that might be involved. Test to make sure that everything is as it should be before you launch your campaign. If you have others helping you, be sure that they are properly trained in posting links so that you don’t run into problems.

Once you have your customized links set up, and your analytics tool ready to receive the information, you will be able to see where your traffic comes from. You can tweak your message, as well as shift your focus to social media channels that prove most effective for your business or web site.

Measuring the results of your social media efforts is never straightforward. However, you can make a lot more progress if you have an idea of which channels are sending more traffic, and which messages seem to be most effective. With the help of custom links, you can see exactly where your traffic is coming from.
Have you tried using custom links? Did they provide you with valuable insight?