How to track contact's engagement on Linkedin

[KGranger]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently trying to track our contact's engagement with our social media on Hubspot to understand their interest in what we post and move them through the sales cycle once they engage. I've been using the tool to schedule my social posts but it still will not track when a contact clicks on a link. I've been testing it with my own account and the social media information is still blank. I'm hoping to use this in workflows so not sure what I'm doing wrong. I also checked with my website developer and he said the hubspot code needed is embedded into our site. Do I need a UTM tracking code and how do I make that on Hubspot? Any support will help thank you!

[jolle · Accepted solution]

Hey @KGranger, thanks for reaching out! This is an awesome question!

So even if you have your social accounts connected to HubSpot, it's still a little tricky to definitively track a specific contact's engagement on your social posts (since HubSpot doesn't own LinkedIn and have full tracking there). However, you're on the right track with UTM tracking! Here's what I would do:

Set up UTMs for all social links

Here is the HubSpot Knowledge Base article on creating what they call tracking links within the camp.... This is the most HubSpot-integrated approach since you can tie these tracking links directly to HubSpot campaigns. You can also use a tool like UTM Maker to easily generate UTMs.

Make sure you designate the social channel and the specific campaign/post as needed. 

You then want to keep an eye on the "Recent source," "Recent source drill-down 1," and "Recent source drill-down 2" properties for existing contacts (and the "Original source" properties for new contacts). HubSpot will pull in the campaign and other UTM attributes, so you can create lists/reports that pull in contacts who converted after engaging with a LinkedIn post. You can also create lists/reports of contacts who viewed pages containing specific UTM elements to see which contacts clicked on LinkedIn posts. 

Use LinkedIn-Specific landing pages

For any offer-based LinkedIn posts (i.e., event signup, content download, quiz), use a landing page (and form) specific to your LinkedIn efforts. Then you'll know that the only way someone can get to that specific page and that specific form is through one of your LinkedIn posts. HubSpot will track the traffic sources and is pretty good at telling which traffic came from LinkedIn if you're using a single page across multiple channel efforts, but having a dedicated page can give you tighter LinkedIn-specific traffic metrics.

Hope this helps!!

[ChrisDraeger888]

@jacob Thank you for this information. I have two follow up questions. One is that you mentioned these two properties: "Recent source drill-down 1," and "Recent source drill-down 2."     Do you mean 'latest' source? I just want to make sure I am not missing anything.

Separately, I've been creating UTMs using HubSpot's UTM Builder (tracking links.) The names of my campaigns always included a slash e.g., "2023/04 Campaign A"  We used this for the date. Now when I try to create a 'list' using UTM links as a filter, I get an error. I THINK it's because I use a Slash in the UTM Campaign name. If I am correct, note that it would be helpful if HubSpot's UTM Builder prevented me from inserting special characters into the UTM Campaign name.

[KGranger]

Thank you!!