1. Integrating bitly
with Google Analytics
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Andaiye Taylor | Director, Content Marketing | bit.ly/andaiye

2. Integrate bitly with Google Analytics for
deeper insight into social media performance
You’ve posted a link to content on your Facebook page. It
racked up comments, shares, and likes. Great!
...Right?
Well, probably. But if you want to understand how much your social
media posts contribute to deeper goals – such as actions on your
website – while still getting the branding, compactness, and real-time
social media insights that bitly short URLs provide, you can use bitly
along with your analytics tool.
Read on to learn how to implement a test manually.
A site analytics package, like Google Analytics, which we’ll use
for this example
A short URL system, like Bitly Enterprise
1
What you’ll need:
1
2

3. STEP 1
Pick a variable to test
Pick one characteristic of your posts you’d like to test, just to get your
feet wet. Some thought starters:
2
• Time of day
Morning versus afternoon posts
• Format
Normal links versus photo posts
• Content
Product updates versus engagement posts
STEP 2
Set up your tracking
Definitions
A tracking parameter is a simple label you attach to the end of
a URL in order to track where web traffic is coming from, and
what types of links are getting clicks. The parameters used by
Google Analytics, which we are using in this example, are called
UTM codes. This is what you will use to analyze the
characteristics you decided to test in Step 1.

4. 3
STEP 2
Set up your tracking (continued)
A UTM code is made up of two elements: a variable and a value.
Google Analytics comes with five preset variables: “source”,
“medium”, “term”, “content”, and “campaign”, preceded always by
the prefix “utm_”. They recommend uses for each of these, but
you can use them however you want, as long as you do so con-sistently.
For instance, you might always use the “utm_source”
parameter to identify the website where your link will appear.
A value defines the parameter in specific instances. If you post
your link on Facebook, the value for the “source” variable might
be “Facebook” (utm_source=Facebook); if you post it on Twitter,
the value might be “Twitter” (utm_source=Twitter).
Add tracking to your URLs to identify the post characteristics you
decided to test in Step 1. Here’s how we recommend you use the three
primary Google Analytics variables:
• Campaign source (utm_source): Where are you placing the
content? Example: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus
• Campaign medium (utm_medium): Paid or organic?
Example: Facebook timeline vs. ad; regular vs. promoted tweet
• Campaign name (utm_campaign): What broader campaign
does this fall into for your brand? Example: Winter Sale 2013,
January Fashion Features, etc.

5. 4
STEP 2
Set up your tracking (continued)
There are two additional, optional variables. Here’s how we
recommend using them:
• Campaign term (utm_content): Use this to identify the
characteristic of your post you decided to track in Step 1
• Campaign content (utm_keyword): Use this to identify these
as bitly URLs. This lets you filter for bitly URLs within Google
Analytics reporting
If you’re posting to your brand’s Facebook timeline in the morning
about your winter sale, your URL could look like this:
http://www.fakefashionco.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_
campaign=wintersale2013&utm_medium=timeline&utmcon-tent=
morning&utm_keyword=bitly
Tip: You can use Google’s URL builder to enter the values for each
of the variables in your URL, but you can also do this manually.
Use the example above as a guide: at the end of your URL, add a
question mark (?) to begin the tracking string. Then add
“utm_VARIABLE=VALUE”, inserting the appropriate Google
Analytics variables and their corresponding values. Separate
multiple variable-value pairs using an ampersand (&).

6. 5
STEP 3
Optimize the link for social media
A long link with lots of parameters isn’t a great look for a social
media post, so how do you make it look more presentable, and get
the other unique benefits Bitly Enterprise provides? Create a
branded custom link by shortening the URLs. Bitly Enterprise also
gives you more control by letting you create a custom “hash”. These
are the characters after the “/”.
http://www.fakefashionco.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_
campaign=wintersale2013&utm_medium=timeline&utmcon-tent=
morning&utm_keyword=bitly
STEP 4
Start posting
fakefash.io/winter2013
Post as you normally would. Just make sure to use the correct URL
for the correct post. If you paste your afternoon link in the morning,
or vice-versa, your analysis will be muddled.

7. 6
STEP 5
Analyze
Tip: Before you try to make sense of your results, be sure to
collect data over an extended amount of time. This will help
smooth out the effect other factors might have on performance
differences.
It’s also a good idea to identify other characteristics of your posts,
so that you can figure out whether some other variable might
have affected performance. One way to do this within Google
Analytics is to add multiple values to your utm_content variable,
separated by a character you can use to separate those values
later. This might look something like: &utm_content=morning_
productupdate_largephoto.
Note that reporting on this type of analytics implementation
is outside of the scope of this guide, which focuses on reporting
against a single characteristic.
If you set up your URLs properly, you can easily look at data in
Google Analytics to learn how well each category you tested drove
engagement with your content.
You can view results in Google Analytics by setting up a custom
widget. If you want to see what the discrepancy is between average
pageviews per visit and time spent on site for content posted in the
morning versus the afternoon, here’s how you’d do it (assuming you

8. 6
STEP 5
Analyze (continued)
set up your tracking according to the instructions above):
• Navigate to Google Analytics
• Select the appropriate account
• If the UI doesn’t default to the “Reporting” tab, select it
• Select “Dashboards” on the left
• Select the default dashboard (“My Dashboard”), or create a new
one if you choose
• Click “+Add Widget”
• Select “Table”
• Add a dimension:
Ad content
• Add a metric:
Pages/Visit and
Avg. Time on Page
• Add Filters:
Keyword exactly matching bitly
Source exactly matching Facebook
Medium exactly matching Timeline
• Name your widget
• Save

9. 77
STEP 5
Analyze (continued)
If you follow our example, you’ll see
performance data for two types of
content: “morning” and “afternoon”.
Google Analytics, or any other
analytics package you use, will have
lots more options than the ones we
used, so feel free to experiment!
• Are you totally lost, but want to get this great insight?
• Do you get the gist, but need help with the implementation?
• Would you like to explore ways to do a deeper integration between
your analytics and Bitly Enterprise?
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, contact one of our
experts for a free consultation.
Request a free consultation
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