NOTE: Link Variables do not work for Instagram since Instagram doesn't support links in posts.
The variables feature is available to Administrators in Denim Social and provides a way to efficiently create one social media post that will populate unique links on different social media pages.
If you are posting on behalf of several users and want to create a social media post that links back to that user's personal webpage, you can create a variable that will automatically create that connection.
Setting Up Variables
Something to think about before setting up a link variable for each of your employees that you are posting on behalf of:
Determine the name of your variable. The variable name should be unique but easy to remember. For example, if you want to create a variable that directs the clicks back to each users' landing page, it may look like this:
landing_page -> www.samplebank.com/landing_page
landing_page -> www.landing_page.samplebank.com
To begin creating a Link Variable, go to Administration > Link Variables>Create Variable (as seen below)
2. To create the variable and link it to the user's social networks, follow the steps below.
*Note: If you have a large number of variables, contact support for information on our upload feature.
a. add in the Name of your variable. The "Name" is your variable name. This is what you will put in your link to give it a variable when you are composing your post. An example of this would be https://www.samplebank.com/<name>
This Name will be used as the common thread across all employees you are posting for on a post
b. Value- This will be the unique part of the link that you want to direct the click to.
This link will be different for each employee and would typically be their landing page or a unique page on a website.
c. Description- Description of link variable. This is the link that you will use to build your variable off of for each post you want to use this link variable for.
To pull it all together, The Variable Name (in purple below) will turn to this Value (the green below) when the description URL (pink below) gets posted to the users' page.
Example: When you compose a post and add in the URL "https://www.samplebank.com/landing_page", since we associated the link variable "landing_page" with "amy_lowell" AND linked it to the social network for Amy Lowell, when that URL is live on Facebook, it will read "https://www.samplebank.com/amy_lowell" and direct to that landing page.
For our example, I have created multiple link variables for 3 of my LO's, here is what my Link Variable page looks like. As you can see, all 3 of my LO's have the same Name, but a different Value (variable)
3. Create a group to include the social media accounts which have variables assigned so you can quickly select those accounts while composing posts. As you can see below, I created a group for my 3 LO's.
4. Create your post. Be sure to use the correct variable URL (in our example, it's https://www.samplebank.com/landing_page below in purple) and the correct group (below in red) if you made one.
*Note: any post with a variable must only be submitted for social networks which have the variable assigned We only did Facebook, so we can only select the Facebook pages associated with the specific variable we chose. You will receive an in-platform message if you have selected social networks that do not have a variable assigned.
Here is a short video on how variables work: How to Use Variables