Measure web conversions at the post level

Attributing website conversions to your social efforts is essential for proving social ROI. Conversions can include visits, page views, sign ups, downloads, or purchases. You can measure social campaign performance based on this data by connecting Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics to Impact. Learn how to set up your web analytics integration

How to measure web conversions at the post level

By integrating your web analytics with Impact, you can see which social networks drove the most web conversions. To track which individual posts resulted in the most web conversions, the key is to use unique UTM parameters. At least one UTM parameter, it doesn't matter which, must be unique in every post.

In this example of a link with UTM parameters, the ‘content’ UTM parameter is being used as the unique tag:
https://blog.hootsuite.com/ utm_source=Facebook&utm_content=28795gsn63kj

The Composer in the Hootsuite dashboard lets you apply Dynamic Post ID UTMs, for use with either Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics, that automatically add unique link parameters at the post level.
See this article to learn how to apply unique UTMs to your posts.

What is the benefit of unique UTM parameters?

When each post link contains a unique UTM, Impact can pinpoint the specific post that resulted in each conversion. This unlocks value in the following areas:

• Browse Content - See how a single post drove website visits, page views, or other goal conversions. Configure your content table to add columns for Website Pageviews and Website Visits. These will help you identify the posts that performed well and drove the most traffic to your site. If your posts don’t contain unique UTM parameters, these columns will always display 0.
  You can also click on a post in the table to open its post analysis view. Web analytics data is displayed under the Intent tab.
• Filter Content - Filter by campaign tag (e.g., summer camping) and then look at your web conversion data to see how each campaign as a whole performed in driving activity on your website.
• ROI Analysis - Compare the activity generated by your own posts to the activity generated by other people posting links to your website (this is sometimes called ‘owned vs earned’ social data).
  • Select one of your own social accounts from the platform drop-downs to view the web activity (Website Pageviews, Website Visits, and Goals) attributed to your posts on each social profile.
  • Select “Non-UTM Traffic to [your domain]” to view all activity from other sources on the social network that led to your website.

What if unique UTMs are not used?

Without a unique UTM on each link you post, you won’t be able to measure content performance at the individual post level. Website metrics in Browse Content and Filter Content will display 0.

In ROI Analysis, data only appears for each of your social accounts if posts contain unique UTMs. If they don't, all your website activity gets combined with your earned data under ‘Non-UTM Traffic' for each social network as a whole. This means you won't be able to separate the conversions that resulted from clicks on your own posts and clicks on other people’s posts.

Contact your customer success manager if you don’t see Non-UTM Traffic data for your social accounts.