Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Bitly
If you're conducting some kind of digital marketing activity, chances are you’re asking the reader or visitor to do something, which usually involves asking them to click on a link to redirect them to your website, a landing page or a specific product or service’s web page.
Normal practice is to copy and paste the desired web page’s URL from your website and add this to your campaign, be that in a button form, or as an embedded link within words or an image.
Now usually that practice works just fine, but what happens if you are wanting to include a link in a social post and that link is really REALLY long?
If the social channel limits your character limit, just like Twitter does, with its 280 characters, chances are you don’t want the link’s long URL address to curb your ability to write a banging post.
Use Bitly, a free tool to shorten your long links into something far briefer. It’s a free URL shortener tool that allows you to create perfect URLs for your business.
Each shortened link acts as a holder that redirects the reader or visitor to your desired web page. Another great feature of this tool is the ability to customise the bitly domain, so you could even give it a reference related to your campaign (so long as no one else has used it before you). Remember every bitly link is unique, so can only be used once. Bitly helps you create and share branded links with custom domains at scale.
But Bitly goes even one step further…
In a previous blog, we spoke about the virtues of Google’s URL Campaign Builder. The tool that allows you to track engagement and activity by campaign element. Well, Bitly has partnered with this tool to add Google’s builder elements in Bitly’s tool too. So not only can you shorten your links with Bitly but you can also add the various campaign elements to it too. Results regarding engagement to each link can then feature on your Google Analytics account.
Add in ‘Source’ i.e. google, newsletter, ‘Medium’ i.e. banner, email, CPC and ‘Campaign’ i.e. spring sale when creating your shortened link and Bitly will track all engagement stats, share them with Google and display them within your Google Analytics account (Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns).
If you need to demonstrate more granularity in your link, let’s say you wanted to track the engagement of various links used in the same campaign i.e. a link used in an advert that features a horse versus a link used in an advert that features a cat, you should go straight to Google’s URL campaign builder [https://bit.ly/itsy-bitsy-bitly] (did you see what we did there?) to add the extra layer of focus. Once Google generates a unique tool that includes all the campaign elements you will then be invited to shorten the link using Bitly.
So next time you need to add a web page URL to your campaign content, social post or email, Stop.
Consider using Bitly instead.
Like what you’ve read?
Jo Buchanan, the author of this blog, is the Founder and Director of TwitTwooYou Limited, a business growth strategic consultancy centred on getting brands noticed. TwitTwooYou offers a range of smart services to help businesses grow and achieve their aspirations and goals. Want to get your brand noticed? Get in touch for a free, no-obligation chat.
