Go On, Take a Bite of bit.ly 101

So you have a few followers and you have a few friends.  But who is really listening?  What if you are working hard to bring value to your readers but you can’t tell if people are clicking on links posted through social media sites?  Well before you burst into tears – kicking and screaming – I want to take a moment to introduce bit.ly.

Bit.ly is a link shortening Web application.  You submit a link, for example:
http://www.christopherbazin.com/click/here/now?cool=123234345 and that gets turned
into this: http://bit.ly/9Sxu8J.  So why is that helpful?  Well for character-limited social media it is  a necessity.  In fact a lot of social media’s auxiliary tools like hootsuite.com have this type of service built in (ow.ly) to anticipate this need.

We can see the practical uses for this by shortening the number of characters you are posting but there is another hidden advantage.  If you know this already you can skip reading this article but the most significant reason for using link shorteners (more specifically bit.ly) is because you can monitor the clicks.  WAIT… WHAT?  Yes, my friends you can tell who clicked your link.

Well let me clarify.  You can’t tell who followed the link but you can tell that someone clicked, shared it, if they tweeted it, comments, country and social media vehicle.  WOW.  All with that tiny URL!

How do I get that information you ask?  Are you sitting down?  With bit.ly it is simple. To the link you shorted and shared, add a plus sign (+).  So when you open a browser you will type: http://bit.ly/9Sxu8J+  presto-change-o there are your stats.

This is an important tool so I am going to review it one more time from the top.

Step one: Copy the URL that you want shortened or tracked

http://iamupthere.com

Step two: go to http://bit.ly and paste that url into the text area and click shorten

Step three: paste the shortened (bit.ly/d2K2Lz) link into emails, social media, webpages, where ever!

Step four: to get stats, type the shorted URL from bit.ly and add a + sign. http://bit.ly/d2K2Lz+ and PRESTO!  Give it try!

Now I am not an expert, but if you have questions go ahead and make a comment and I will respond. It truly is amazing and remember, you can also check how well your competitor links are doing too! (wink)