Unleash the Power of the Link: 5 Smart Ways to Use Bit.ly
Originally published on www.sociallysaf.com.
Bit.ly is a nifty URL shortening tool, designed to unleash the real power of the link. Bit.ly shortens over 1 billion links and those generate more than 6 billion clicks per month. It is used ubiquitously on many different channels like social media, SMS, emails, etc, by publishers, brands, non-profits and individual users. More importantly, bit.ly democratizes the process of link shortening and makes the service and its detailed analytics accessible to every Internet user.
Meet "The Pufferfish", aka Bit.ly's mascot
1 - First Step: Reserve Your Branded Bit.ly Link
Think of it like reserving your branded .com URL. Act fast, don’t let anyone else to reserve your name before you do :-)
Bit.ly Links are easily customizable and they can be edited at a later date, too.
2 – Use It on Your Instagram Profile
Instagram is a powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes, but it also has its flaws. Perhaps one of the most bothersome ones is that, it’s not possible to place a clickable link in photo captions or comments. The only way to drive people to your landing page is through the only clickable link which is in your Instagram profile.
To make the best use of this opportunity, it is highly recommended to use a bit.ly link instead of your regular URL. A big benefit of doing this is being able to get the most accurate analytics through bit.ly. Here’s why: A downside of tracking the clicks from Instagram is that, most traffic coming from a mobile device is actually considered internet browser referrals, as further explained in this article. Analytics don’t look at these as explicit referrals from Instagram, and they classify them as general browser traffic. To overcome this problem, it’s a great practice to use a customized bit.ly link in your Instagram profile. (Make sure you use this link only on your Instagram page so that you know exactly where the clicks are from).
3 – Use It in Your Social Media Posts
There’s absolutely no room for long URLs in social media posts, since they make the copy cluttered and wordy, and also they make it difficulty to meet the character limit standards. To avoid that, simply use a bit.ly link for the webpage you are promoting. Facebook gives bigger organic (free) exposure to posts that are in photo + caption format versus posts that are simply links to other websites. That way you will also increase your organic reach. To advertise your web link, simply use an image from the landing page as the photo of your Facebook post, and in the caption, use the bit.ly link instead of the full web URL).
Bit.ly provides detailed analytics on referrals from Facebook and Twitter. (You can even see which tweets used your link, by simply logging in with Twitter.) It also lists other URL referrals under “Other Sites”.
Tip: It’s possible to track the visitor stats of ANY bit.ly shortened link by adding “+” at the end of the link you’d like to know more about. You don’t need a membership to use this feature.
4 – Use It In Emails
There are many ways of integrating bit.ly links into your emails. You can share your most recent white paper (or even your resume) in your email signature via bit.ly. Also, it’s great to use for your email marketing efforts. Bit.ly provides an effortless URL masking opportunity which helps get around email server filters for specific URLs. (For example, if you are suspecting that your company’s marketing emails are filtered by spam detectors because of the domains which are embedded in it, you can try replacing them with a bit.ly links). This way you can track the detailed analytics of the clicks from numbers of clicks to the geographic distribution of the clicks.
Are you emailing multiple contacts in different countries all at once? Now you can spy on them to see if you actually clicked on that link!
5 – Take It To The Next Level: Get Your Own Branded Short Link
Bit.ly offers branded, short URL solutions for companies. Having a branded URL shortener allows a company to reinforce its brand every time it links to content on social media or other channels, and not indirectly promote bit.ly instead. Some of the well know branded, shortened URLs are The New York Times (nyti.ms), Groupon (gr.pn) and The Time Magazine (ti.me). As mentioned on this shortened URL directory, there are other ways of creating your own branded shortened URL, in addition to buying it from companies like bit.ly.
Here's someone who’s NOT getting anything from Santa next Christmas! :)
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No matter in what capacity you need link shortening services, bit.ly offers great tools to turning your ordinary links into meaningful data, and the ease of use makes it the leading link shortener in the market. The mobile bit.ly appalso gives the users access to all features they get on the web version, and it’s a no brainer for social media marketers on the go.
Do you know other creative ways of using bit.ly? Tell our readers in the comments section or tweet to me at @sociallysaf.
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