Platform analytics stop at the edge of the platform. They will tell you a post reached nine thousand people and say nothing about whether any of them bought anything.
What a tagged link is
A few extra words on the end of a URL that your own analytics reads and reports. It changes nothing for the visitor and gives you the answer to “where did this person come from”.
- utm_source — the network: instagram, telegram, linkedin
- utm_medium — how: social, email, bio
- utm_campaign — what: spring-launch, tour-2026
postgust.com/pricing?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spring
The discipline part
Tags only work if they are consistent. “instagram”, “Instagram” and “ig” become three sources in the report, and the report becomes useless in about a month. Write the convention down once — all lowercase, no spaces — and follow it.
Where it fails
A tagged link in an Instagram caption is not clickable, so the tag never travels. There the bio link carries the tag instead, which is also why a bio link that changes weekly cannot be measured.