Blogsite Customization & Coaching

One of the easiest and fastest ways to measure your online audience’s interest in your posts, tweets or email promotions is to use a URL shortener. URL shorteners simply take a long URL and shorten it to a manageable amount of characters, rendering them easier to type, remember and look at. While handy for that alone, URL shorteners can also be used to give you an immediate insight into what subjects and keywords your readers (blog, social media, ezine, etc) are most interested in.

There are a LOT of sites out there that do the link shortening part.  TinyURL was one of the first, and is still widely used, offering an easy way to customize an link with an easy to remember name and safety preview feature. However, TinyURL doesn’t have tracking features – so you don’t have any quick click-through stats to refer to.  With the advent of the social media age (especially Twitter), link shorteners have gained new importance and now offer users on-the-spot analytics.

Two link shortener services stand out:  Bit.ly and HootSuite. HootSuite is more of a web-based social media client, but uses its own shortener (ow.ly)  which delivers stats on clickthroughs. If you are a heavy social media user (it posts to Facebook and LinkedIn as well as Twitter), HootSuite is indispensable.

If you use a desktop app to manage Twitter, TweetDeck and Twirl can be used with other shorteners such as Bit.ly, Cli.gs and Tr.im to deliver tracking.

Along with HootSuite, Bit.ly is my favorite. Easy to use, it provides the user a history of their own shortened links, clickthroughs and total number of bit.ly-shortened links pointing to the same page destination.

Here’s my 5 top tips to get the most out of URL-shorteners:

1.  Create an account at a shortening site that supports tracking and use it consistently to shorten all your links. Bit.ly, Tr.im, Cli.gs or Snipurl support tracking. Check out this URL shortener feature chart to compare.

2.  Use a social media management tool such as HootSuite or Ping.fm (check settings!) to consolidate posting to your profiles.

3.  If you are posting affiliate links, use the shortener to track clickthroughs and check them against your official affiliate stats.

4.  Split-test your mailings by sending two versions of linked text in an email,  then compare your click-through rates.

5.  If you tweet frequently about a variety of subjects, check stats to see what subjects attract the most clickthroughs.  The numbers may surprise you.

When used in conjunction with your normal website stats, URL shorteners can add an immediate layer of analytics to support your marketing efforts.

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