subject: Do You Play Link Tag? [print this page] Do You Play Link Tag? Do You Play Link Tag?
The common question I hear from clients is "how do you know it works?" I get this question as it pertains to email, blogging, social media, new optimized contentname the scenario and the question arises. It is a valid question inevery instance. After all, how do I know:
If my segmented email drew any revenue?
If any trafficactually comes from the blog?
If anyonereally bought a product due to a twitter post?
In a perfect world, you would have back end systems such as Bazaar Voice and/or Omniture to track people from every outlet. But, as often is the case, small businesses do not operate in a perfect world with endless budgets. They exist in a "get it done and sell" world. Which is why I play link tag.
What is link tag, you ask? It's a simple game of taking any website link and tagging it with a free tool so you know exactly where a link came from and what the link topic was. Let's take a real world example:
My Email ROI post link ishttp://tushinski.com/2010/09/email-roi-through-the-eyes-of-a-poindexter/ Nothing fancy there. Just the web address automatically built when I created the WordPress post
But say, for example, I submitted my blog post to Digg and I want to knowexactly how many people clicked on my Digg link to come to the post. How would I track that? Simple, enter the freeGoogle Link Builder. To tag my links, I simply:
Enter my blog post address
Enter a campaign source.I'll usedigg (since that is my link source)
Enter a medium. I'll uselink (since this is a link and not a banner or email or Twitter post)
Enter a campaign name. I'll useEmailROI (since I want to build awareness of my Email ROI post)
Hit submit and the Link Builder tool spits out http://tushinski.com/2010/09/email-roi-through-the-eyes-of-a-poindexter/?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=EmailRoi As you can see, the tool adds information to your web address with the specific info you want
The link goes to the same page, my Email ROI post, but it simply has extra info for tracking
So I now have my link tagged and submitted to Digg. Now what? How do I know if someoneactuallyvisitedthe blog post from Digg? Now this is where the rubber meets the road. Since I have Google Analytics set up on my site (you do don't you? C'mon, it's free), I can view the results of myspecifictagged link. Here's how:
In my Google Analytics account, dive into the Traffic Sources >> Campaigns section This is whereall the tagged link information will be housed
Since I tagged my link with the campaign source of Digg, I would find the Digg campaign and see how many visits it generated:
I can see it generated 585 visits
On a very simple level, evaluating your campaigns is as simple as that. Just takes some link tagging and a Google Analytics reports.
So, you can now expand your usage to other areas. I play tag with almostevery link I use. Ass a few examples:
I tagevery link in my email campaigns by naming the specific email and the date it was sent.
Every blog post is tagged with a sorce of Blog
Every Facebook post is tagged with source of Facebook
In this way, I know from where my traffic is coming, I can evaluate the effectiveness of my blogging, email, and social media efforts, and, when applied to my ecommerce clients, I can track revenue generated from each area. Here is how.
Head back to your Google Analytics account (this willonly apply if you have ecommerce tracking enabled in Analytics)
Go back to the Campaigns section
Go to a specific campaign We'll use Digg as an example, again
If this were an ecommerce site, I would have an Ecommerce tab available in my report
Under the ecommerce tab, I would see the revenue generated for my Digg campaign
Google Analytics makes it stupid simple to get the info you need. So now I have a near complete picture of my link activities. From link source to revenue generated from that link. From there, I can work with accounting folks to figure out what the ROI for each may be (accounting normally provides me information on product margins so I can getactual ROI).
Playing link tag is a simple method for tracking efforts. If you want a more robust picture of your efforts, I strongly suggest implementing a link tagging system for your site. Tagyour it.
