Pinterest announced today that they are now adding support for Google Analytics UTM variables or “tracking codes,” which will allow content creators to measure the performance of each Pin. If you’ve only been reporting how much referral traffic Pinterest brings to your site – you’re in for a real treat.

Sure it’s nice to know how much Pinterest accounts for total traffic but understanding which piece of content is driving all that traffic is even better! All you have to do is add a snippet of text at the end of your URL.

Marketers that run pay-per-click (PPC) or display ads, do this all the time—I know because I used to be a Search Engine Marketing Manager and tagging ad campaigns was super important for tracking performance.

So what are UTM Tracking Codes?

I like to think of them as Who, What, Where, When and Why variables because they complete the story of your analytics. A typical URL with a tracking code looks something like this:

Campaign is usually the name of your promotion. Example: utm_campaign=SpringCleaning

Source is the name of the website that is driving traffic to your site or blog post. Example: utm_source=Pinterest

Medium is how that traffic is delivered like PPC, display ads, email or social media. Example: utm_medium=Social

Content identifies the type of content like leaderboard, header photo or pin. Example: utm_content=Pin

Term is the keyword to help describe the content. Example: utm_term=audit

The great thing about UTM Tracking Codes is that you don’t have to use all of the five variables, you can choose the bare minimum or get super detailed.

How to Use UTM Tracking Codes on Pinterest

Let’s say you have an online website selling dresses and you wanted to create a Pinterest board for “Little Black Dresses Under $100.”

If the URL for the little black dresses you want to pin was http://www.dreamdress.com/lbd-lace, I would edit it to become: http://www.dreamdress.com/lbd-lace?utm_campaign=LBDUnder100&utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=Pin&utm_term=lbd-lace

So when someone comes to your site and buys a dress (any dress), you can take a look at your analytics and find out what that person was looking at on Pinterest that drove them to purchase.

To break it down even further, I would set up UTM variables like this:

1. utm_campaign=Name of Your Pinterest Board
2. utm_source=Pinterest
3. utm_medium=Social
4. utm_content=Pin
5. utm_term=Keyword Describing Pin

Helpful Hint #1: If you want to change the source of an existing Rich Pin, Vincent Ng at MCNG Marketing has a great tutorial on How to Link Your Website to Any Pin on Pinterest.

Helpful Hint #2: You can use Google’s URL Builder to create your “tagged” URL but it can get really messy if you have a lot of Pinterest Boards or campaigns that you want to track. You want to make sure that your campaign names are spelled the same and have the same letter case.  If you used “LBD100” and “lbd100” as your campaign names, Google Analytics would think that they’re two different campaigns and you’ll have traffic metrics for two campaigns when you really wanted them to be rolled into one. To help you avoid making that mistake, you can use my Google URL Builder Worksheet.

Pinterest Google URL Builder Worksheet

If you haven’t been able to tell yet, I’m a huge data nerd and I love Excel. With a few Excel formulas, I’ve made it super easy for you to add your UTM tracking codes and have it automatically append to the end of your URL.

All you have to do is fill out columns A – H and the worksheet will give you a tagged URL in column K that you can copy and paste to Pinterest.

The formulas in the worksheet are updated all the way down to row 50 so you can easily get started.

Ready to give it a try? Get my Pinterest Google URL Worksheet for FREE when you sign up for my newsletter!

UPDATE: Sorry this freebie is no longer offered.

Facebook is  making changes to its policy on Cover Photos and News Feed ads in regards to text overlays. Effective January 15th, text will be limited to no more than 20% of an image’s area. Logos with text will count toward this limit.

According to Facebook’s updated guidelines under Section III.D, “Ads and sponsored stories for News Feed that originate from Pages may not include images with more than 20% text.”

Since the launch of Timeline, Facebook has always deterred the use of calls to action and price/purchase information in photos to prevent brands from sharing images that looked like traditional banner ads. However, the policy was vague and not always followed or enforced.

This time, to ensure advertisers are compliant with the new policy, the company is developing a grid-based text overlay detection tool to identify non-compliant images. A version of this tool will be available within Power Editor to help advertisers know in advance whether images will be approved.

Since this new image policy impacts community managers, creative directors, and individuals that specialize in Facebook advertising, now is the best time to get everyone on board and discuss how to prepare.

Below is a short checklist to get started. Remember to allow yourself enough time to audit, edit, and update images.

Facebook Checklist

• Audit all Timeline cover photos and alert the Creative team if any images need to be updated.
• Check images in current and upcoming Facebook ad campaigns to ensure ads get through the approval process.
• Review editorial calendars to ensure images in posts that may be supported later with a Promoted Post abide with the new ad policy and replace images as needed.

If you have any other suggestions on how to prepare for Facebook’s updated ad policy, please leave a comment below.