UTM Link Builder

What UTM parameters are, and why they matter

UTM parameters are small tags appended to the end of a URL that tell an analytics tool exactly where a visit came from. Without them, a link shared on Instagram and the same link shared in a newsletter both show up in your analytics as plain, unlabeled traffic — impossible to tell apart after the fact.

Three parameters do almost all of the real work. utm_source names where the click came from — instagram, tiktok, newsletter. utm_medium names the general channel that source belongs to — bio, email, offline. utm_campaign names the specific push you're tracking — a product launch, a seasonal sale, a single newsletter send. Every major analytics tool splits traffic by all three, so filling them in consistently is what turns a pile of clicks into a real answer to "where did this traffic actually come from."

utm_term and utm_content are optional

utm_term and utm_content exist for two narrower cases. utm_term is mainly useful for paid search, where it records the actual keyword a search ad was bought against. utm_content is mainly useful for A/B testing content variants — two links pointing at the same destination, tagged with different utm_content values, so you can tell which version of a button, an ad, or an email link actually got the click. Neither is required for a link in bio setup, and this tool leaves both optional rather than forcing a value into fields that would otherwise just repeat the campaign name.

Using the presets

The four presets below fill in utm_source and utm_medium for the most common places a link in bio tool actually gets used, so there's less to type by hand and less room for a typo to quietly break a campaign's tracking.

• Instagram bio — tags a click as coming from instagram via bio, for the one link most Instagram profiles carry.
• TikTok bio — same idea for a TikTok profile's own bio link.
• Newsletter — tags a click as coming from an email send, for a link placed in a newsletter.
• QR code — tags a click as coming from offline, for a link printed on a poster, flyer, or business card and scanned rather than clicked.

Where a tagged link is actually useful

A UTM-tagged link is only as useful as the analytics tool reading it, so it's worth pointing it somewhere that actually reports on UTM parameters — most site analytics tools do. It's a natural fit for a link in bio page too: tag the same destination differently for an Instagram bio link versus a TikTok bio link, and a shared analytics tool can tell the two apart even though both point at the same page.

A strands profile and a strands short link both track every click automatically, with no tagging required — see Understanding your link analytics. Adding UTM parameters on top of that doesn't replace that built-in tracking; it adds a second, independent record in whatever outside analytics tool you already use, so the two can be checked against each other.