What is utm_campaign=buffer?

Who adds it

Buffer adds it to links it publishes when campaign tracking is on for a channel. The defaults are utm_campaign=buffer, utm_medium=social and a utm_source naming the network, such as facebook.com, linkedin.com or x.com.

What it means

Someone clicked a link in a social post that was scheduled through Buffer. The source tag and the referrer (t.co, l.facebook.com, lnkd.in and so on) tell you which network.

What to do with it

GA4 counts these visits as Organic Social because the medium is social. Buffer lets the account owner change the default values.

How Vireo shows it

Vireo Pro's UTM campaigns card lists tagged visits by Source, Medium and Campaign, with visitors and pageviews. The tags are read from the first page of each visit, and the same tags feed revenue by source.

In the free plugin, Vireo drops the query string from page addresses, keeping only a few WordPress ones such as p and page_id, so a tagged URL counts as the same page as the untagged one. The visit is counted under the referrer it arrived with.

UTM campaigns are part of Vireo Pro. See UTM campaigns in the docs.

Sources

Campaign Name: buffer Campaign Source: x.com or twitter.com / facebook.com / linkedin.com / bufferapp.com Campaign Medium: social

Understanding UTM parameters and Google Analytics - Buffer Help Center

Organic Social Source matches a regex list of social sites OR Medium is one of (“social”, “social-network”, “social-media”, “sm”, “social network”, “social media”)

Default channel group - Analytics Help