Simple Way to Track Your Twitter Tweets Using Google Analytics

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As micro-blogging is becoming more and more mainstream and business are started to adopt the social media aspect of it to help market services and products, I wanted to share a simple solution for tracking that information using Google Analytics.

Twitter, a leading web application in micro-blogging, allows users to send short, 140 character messages (”Tweets”) to other people that are followers. This is a great way for businesses to share information with their followers. I use Twitter to publicize our upcoming events for SharePoint and Enterprise Project Management along with upcoming classes we are offering. You can Follow Springhouse on Twitter to receive our tweets.

The first step to track the traffic from your tweets is to add Google Analytic tracking code to the page/post URL. I use the following code:

?utm_campaign=blogpost&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=micro-blog

An example of a full URL would look like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/page.htm?utm_campaign=blogpost&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=micro-blog

Then I copy the full URL with added code and browse to TinyURL to shorten the URL for my tweet. Past the full URL into the box and TinyURL will create one for you, something like:

http://tinyurl.com/3dF73j

Now you can take the tinyurl and copy/paste it into your tweet and send it out to your followers.

Sit Back and Wait

See that wasn’t too hard to do. Now just sit back and wait a day or so for people to click-thru your tweet. Google Analytics will start to see these hits and begin to track them accordingly.

I use the following format in my tracking code for all of my blog posts/twitter tweets unless there is a special post I need to track separately.

utm_campaign=blogpost

utm_source=twitter

utm_medium=micro-blog

This allows me to drill down in Google Analytics to find the exact number of hits from a tweet.

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  • nicolettebeasley
    thanks! I'm going to try that.
  • It works nicely for me when tracking my tweets and posts to our company's Facebook page. Also, another thing to do if you have set landing pages for certain products, information, etc is to set up Bit.ly links with all the Google Tracking variables attached. Saves time when tweeting those links!
  • nicolettebeasley
    Thanks so much, I never would have thought to use the Bit.ly links that
    way. I'm very new to all this ecommerce and just launched my website, blog
    and twitter a couple of months ago. I really appreciate the great info!

    best regards,
    Nicolette
    www.healthygourmetgifts.com
  • Yeah, i'm all about saving time with tracking URLs in Google Analytics and found that using Bit.ly is great. not only can I get reports from Bit.ly, I also can determine if someone click on one of my links and see where (site) and what campaign was clicked.

    For example, we run free webinars and I have 3 seperate Bit.ly links set up that I use all the time for these webinars.

    they are for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I change the Google Analytics variables so I know where my web visitors found the link! it's great.

    http://sitename/path/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Tweet&utm_campaign=You-can-name-your-campaign

    then swap out the utm_source and utm_medium for Facebook and LinkedIn or whatever! Good luck!!


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  • Meghan812
    It's been a day since I added your code to my tweets, but nothing is happening in analytics so far. Did I miss something? Also, can you elaborate specifically where each of these tracking codes go? (utm_campaign=blogpost, utm_source=twitter, utm_medium=micro-blog)
  • jackmcintyre
    You can automate this with my wordpress plugin, Tracked Tweets, if you are interested.

    More info at http://www.jackmcintyre.net/projects/tracked-tweets/

    I also like to track RSS traffic in the same way.
  • Blimey, that was really simple. Thank you very much for tip!
  • Really Informative. Thanks For the great blog.
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