How to Track Tweets with Google Analytics

Sending a tweet into the world without a way to track its impact is like putting a message in a bottle and hoping for the best. You can see likes and retweets on X (formerly Twitter), but you have no idea what happens after the click. This article will show you exactly how to use UTM parameters and Google Analytics to see which specific tweets are driving traffic, engagement, and even sales on your website.

Why You Can't Rely on X's Native Analytics Alone

The analytics inside the X platform give you valuable top-of-funnel metrics like impressions, engagements, and link clicks. This is great for understanding which content resonates with your audience on the platform itself. However, that data stops the second a user leaves X and lands on your website.

By only looking at X's data, you're missing the answers to critical questions:

What did visitors do after they clicked my tweet? Did they bounce immediately or visit multiple pages?
Which specific tweet drove the most newsletter sign-ups or product purchases?
How does the quality of traffic from my "profile link" compare to traffic from a "promotional campaign tweet"?
Was that viral tweet full of valuable potential customers or just casual browsers?

To answer these questions, you need to connect the dots between the click on X and the user's behavior on your site. That's where Google Analytics and a simple tracking method called UTM parameters come in.

The Secret Ingredient: Understanding UTM Parameters

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are simple tags you add to the end of your URLs. They don’t change the destination page, but they feed valuable information into Google Analytics, telling it exactly where a visitor came from and how they got there. When someone clicks a URL with UTM tags, Google Analytics reads these tags and sorts that visit into the correct digital bucket.

There are five standard UTM parameters, but for tracking your tweets, you’ll primarily focus on three:

utm_source: This identifies the source of the traffic. For tracking X, you’ll always use a consistent value like twitter.
utm_medium: This identifies the marketing medium. A common choice here is social to group all your social media efforts.
utm_campaign: Name the specific campaign your tweet is a part of. This could be a product launch, a holiday promotion, or content promotion. For example, q3_new_feature_launch.

But the real key to tracking individual tweets lies in a fourth parameter:

utm_content: This is where the magic happens for tweet-level tracking. Use this tag to describe the specific tweet itself. Is it a video tweet? A tweet with a customer quote? A thread? For example, video_explainer_tweet_1 or customer_testimonial_graphic.

The fifth parameter, utm_term, is typically used for tracking keywords in paid search campaigns, so it's less relevant for organic social media posts.

Putting it all together, a regular link like https://www.mycoolshop.com/new-product turns into this:

https://www.mycoolshop.com/new-product?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summer_sale&utm_content=discount_code_gif

When someone clicks this, Google Analytics knows they came from X (twitter), specifically from a social post (social), as part of the Summer Sale campaign (summer_sale), and from the tweet that used a GIF to promote a discount code (discount_code_gif).

How to Create UTM-Tagged URLs for Your Tweets

Manually typing out these long URLs is tedious and prone to errors. Thankfully, there are easy tools to build them perfectly every time.

Method 1: Use Google's Campaign URL Builder

Google provides a free, simple-to-use tool for creating UTM-tagged links. It’s perfect for creating one-off links quickly.

Step-by-Step Guide for the Google URL Builder:

Navigate to Google's Campaign URL Builder. The tool is for GA4, which is the current version of Google Analytics.
Enter your website URL: Paste the URL of the landing page you want to send people to (e.g., https://www.mycoolshop.com/new-blog-post).
Fill in the Campaign Source: This is your utm_source. Always use a consistent, lowercase name like twitter.
Fill in the Campaign Medium: This is your utm_medium. A good standard is social.
Fill in the Campaign Name: This is your utm_campaign. Be descriptive. For a blog post, it might be promoting_utm_guide. For a sale, july_4th_promo.
Fill in the Campaign Content (The most important step for tweets): This is your utm_content. This identifies the specific tweet. Use a descriptive name like tweet_thread_day1, infographic_tweet, or profile_bio_link.

As you fill out the fields, the tool automatically generates the full campaign URL at the bottom. You can simply copy this URL.

Pro-Tip: The generated URL will be very long. It's a best practice to use a URL shortener like Bitly or TinyURL before posting it to X. This makes your tweet look cleaner and less cluttered.

Method 2: Create a Master Spreadsheet for Consistency

If you post on X frequently or work with a team, using a spreadsheet is the best way to maintain consistent UTM naming conventions and stay organized.

A simple Google Sheet or Excel file can become your UTM source of truth. Here's a basic structure:

Column A: Base URL (the link you're promoting)
Column B: Source (twitter)
Column C: Medium (social)
Column D: Campaign Name (e.g., spring_collection_launch)
Column E: Content (e.g., behind_the_scenes_video)
Column F: Final URL (this column will auto-generate the link)

In the "Final URL" cell (F2), you can use a simple concatenation formula to build the link for you:

=A2&"?utm_source="&B2&"&utm_medium="&C2&"&utm_campaign="&D2&"&utm_content="&E2

By using a spreadsheet, you ensure everyone on your team uses twitter instead of Twitter or X, preventing your data from getting messy in Google Analytics.

How to Find Your Tweet Data in Google Analytics 4

Once you start using your UTM-tagged links, the data will begin flowing into Google Analytics. Here's how to find and analyze it.

Log in to your Google Analytics 4 property.
In the left-hand navigation menu, click on Reports.
Under the Acquisition section, click on Traffic acquisition.

This report shows you where your website traffic comes from. By default, it’s grouped by "Session default channel group". To see your UTM data, you’ll want to change the primary dimension.

Click the dropdown arrow above the first column of the table (it likely says "Session default channel group") and change it to Session source / medium. You should now see a row for twitter / social.

Drilling Down to Individual Campaign and Tweet Performance

Seeing all of your Twitter traffic in one bucket is good, but you want to see the performance of individual campaigns and tweets. To do this, you need to add a secondary dimension.

In the Traffic acquisition report, click the small blue "+" icon next to the primary dimension column heading.
A search box will appear. Type "campaign" and select Session campaign. This will add a new column to your report showing the utm_campaign for each source/medium.
To see the performance of individual tweets, click the blue "+" icon again.
This time, search for "content" and select Session manual ad content. This dimension corresponds directly to your utm_content tag.

Now you have a detailed report that shows you:

Source/Medium: twitter / social
Session Campaign: The campaign each tweet was associated with (e.g., fall_promo)
Session Manual Ad Content: The specific name you gave each tweet (e.g., customer_review_image)

From here, you can analyze metrics like Users, Sessions, Engaged sessions, and, most importantly, Conversions. You can now definitively say, "The customer review image tweet drove twice as many engaged sessions as the simple text tweet during our Fall Promo campaign."

Final Thoughts

Tracking the performance of individual tweets using UTM parameters in Google Analytics elevates your social media strategy from guesswork to a data-informed operation. It allows you to move beyond surface-level metrics like likes and see which messages truly drive valuable user behavior and contribute to your business goals.

While this process is powerful, we know that manually creating dozens of UTM links and then digging through multiple layers of reports in Google Analytics can be time-consuming. At Graphed, we automate all of this tedious work. We connect directly to your data sources like Google Analytics and X, so you can just ask in plain English for the insights you need. Instead of building reports, you can simply ask, "Which of my tweets drove the most conversions during our last campaign?" and instantly get a clear visualization with the answer - giving you back hours to focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.