4 Reasons to Use Short Links
URL shorteners like Bit.ly or Shorte.st are services that help you shorten your long and often awkward URL into something more manageable and pleasant for the eyes. However, there are other arguments for using short links. Today, we’ll take a look at 5 situations in which using link shortener is a must.
Short links make things neat at social media
One of the most common reasons to use short links is to make your social media post more readable. Don’t you just hate when a hellishly long URL just breaks down the good, neat vibe of your post? How do you expect anyone to click on an URL that takes three whole lines? Every social media expert will tell you that it is always good to use short links when posting. Moreover, depending on the particular platform and its features you may be forced to shorten the link anyway. The best example is Twitter which automatically shortens all URL longer than 20 characters, because otherwise with their 144 character limit you would be able to post the link only, no comment, no nothing. That is not how most of the social media works, right? After all, most of the platforms are about self-expression and discussions, not just posting.
Short links are easier to manage
When you like to upload a lot of stuff but like everything to be organized or your content activities require you to have all the necessary links categorized and on hand, short links are the way to go. Some short links services let you customize your short links and name them according to your own naming key, provided it is not already taken by anyone else. This can be very helpful when you have to organize a lot of links in a spreadsheet. Other services have sections devoted to showing you all of your previously shortened links, sometimes with simple statistics like click-through rate or geos. This part is especially important for the group of people interested in the next reason.
Short links let you track clicks
One of the most important aspects for anyone affiliated with marketing is to be able to gather accurate data about your action and presence in the media. Link shorteners, especially Bit.ly, are the best friends of any marketing specialist that needs to keep track of the detailed number of clicks, the source of the click and geographical location. You can easily track the CTR of your social media post or how many people out of all that you send that sales email to actually opened your product brochure. It is always good to know that the biggest number of clicks on the link to your latest blog post came from the United States through your Twitter post. By having such data it is easy to know if you’re doing well or if you need to change some things in your content strategy.
Short links let you earn money
There’s a saying: “If something can be found on the Internet, you surely can make money from it”. Ok, I made that up, but there’s a grain of truth in it, at least when it comes to short links. It is very simple. Thanks to short links traffic going through the third party (short link service) you can do specific things with traffic depending on the service. In this case, the short link service shows an ad from a partnered advertiser for a brief time, usually a couple of seconds, before the user is redirected to his or her original destination.
You can ask who would do this? As one of the biggest companies in this niche, we see at least two types of users that manage achieve a stable monthly income from their links — website owners that offer downloadable content and users that are the fastest to offer fresh info and news about tools and services to the interested groups at forums and social media. If you want to learn more about our service, be sure to check out our latest article on short links money making on the Shorte.st blog.
Have any doubts or arguments against? We’ll be happy to discuss it with you in the comments
