Playbook: Lock a UTM convention before you schedule a single post

Playbook: Lock a UTM convention before you schedule a single post
UTM tagging (the ?utm_source=… tags that tell analytics where a click came from) breaks the moment two people spell it differently. Build the rulebook once.
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Step 1: Force lowercase everywhere. Facebook and facebook split into two rows in GA4.
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Step 2: Fix the five slots — source=platform, medium=organic-social, campaign=YYYY-MM-theme, content=post-format, term=skip.
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Step 3: Build a Google Sheet generator so no one hand-types tags.
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Step 4: Add a saved UTM template inside your scheduler (Buffer and Sprout both store one) so it auto-appends on every link.
✔ One clean traffic-source table
✔ No 'direct/none' junk from typos
✖ Retroactive fixes are painful — do it now
Best for: teams of 2+ touching the same calendar.
Pick this if your social rows in GA4 already look messy. Free.