How to correctly track Google Analytics inbounds from social channel

Question

We have this case:

• a link from the website is shared as a post on a social media platform like LinkedIn
• when the user clicks that link he is directed on the website; from there he/she clicks another link in order to go on the page with a contact form
• the user fills in the contact form and submits it

We track all of this as "page views" but for some reason the inbounds on the contact page appear as coming through the "Direct" channel, not "Social" or any other. Is it possible to know which inbounds come from the Social channel in a case like this one?

Answer 1

When posting links to direct people to your site, you should use query strings to assign extra data. This is called Campaign Parameterisation, or Campaign Tagging.

There are three parameters you should always add:

• utm_medium - The marketing channel (social, email, cpc, etc.)
• utm_source - The advertiser/site/publication in question (facebook, outbrain, bing, etc.)
• utm_campaign - The name of the Camapign that this link is a part of (summersale, newsletter, etc.)

There are two more you can add if you need them:

• utm_term - Paid Search only. The Keyword.
• utm_content - Used to differentiate between tags (body1, creative3, etc.)

Google Analytics has a URL builder you can use that will make this very simple: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

Answer 2

Use google's URL generator to track your social media campaigns.

Google URL Generator

Answer 3

Always put some query string attached to social posts like "utm_source", "utm_campaign" and whenever user visit site, assign random identifier in session and using all these data, you can accurately track conversions from social sources.

example: https://www.example.com/2016/06/04/how-to-track-social-media-campaign?utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=promo