November 6, 2019
Now that you know the best way to present your shortened link, you should start thinking about the who, what, and where. It’s important to not only know your audience, but understand the limits and expectations of each channel you use to promote.
Social platforms are affected by a variety of factors that include:
One universal for all channels and their quirks is the use of short links to strengthen a message. In fact, branded short links have shown to improve click-through rates by 34%. They can be used in a variety of social contexts from profiles to podcasts and influencers.
Check out these best practices when applying short links to social initiatives:
Every character counts when presenting a social profile. Especially when it’s for a brand. You must get to the point! You have a very small space to convey everything about your business.
That’s why custom short links are the perfect way to grow social engagement, while also sharing a message (and promoting your brand). Because these links use real words and not some senseless computer-generated jargon, they tend to stand out.
In fact, when placed right, branded links can speak for themselves. Not only are they memorable, but they also infuse your social profile with personality. People start to get what your company is all about in just one click.
Additionally, people use branded links in their social profiles for technical reasons. It’s easy to keep the link and simply swap out the destination page. It only takes a second to direct a static URL to a live promotion, campaign, landing page, etc. There’s no need to manually create and update the links in every profile when you’re marketing
A link on the radio? But how?
Yes, short links are ideal for podcasts and radio because they are just that…short. It’s a quick quip or message to promote while on the air. Since most URLs are long and complex, the only way to build a bridge between audio and link promotion, is by shortening the entire address.
Maximize your broadcasting and drive traffic from audio sources using branded short links with memorable words. For example:
www.mypodcast.com/episodes/episode14/long-episode-name-nobody-will-remember
This is not really something you can promote through the medium of radio or a podcast. However, a little wave of the shortening wand and VOILA!
Now, THIS is something you can definitely work with!
Another reason to use short links in your podcast and radio programs is that it’s hard to track the media ads as a referral source.
However, if you set up a link for each audio promotion, you’ll be able to instantly see who visited your site from specific channels. This is one of the only ways of attaching analytics to audio campaigns.
Once you’ve created the audio ad, you can swap the redirect URL at any time. For example, if you’re promoting a campaign on a podcast to register for something, once the registration closes, you can redirect the branded link to your homepage. It works out great for audio because there is no way to change a link once it’s been announced on air.
How do you know if the money you have invested in influencer marketing is worth it? Are the people you hired getting the best results? You can use short links to measure your influencer efforts on social campaigns. The analytics will show you things like:
Assign each influencer a link and gain instant transparency into how their job affects your bottom line.
You can even turn it into a fun campaign. Let the influencers name their own links to share directly with their audience. The transparency empowers them. It gives them ownership of their activity and results.
Short links can give you a better sense of which relationships are the most valuable to your business. This, in turn, allows you to develop stronger influencer marketing strategies.
In Part 3 of Key Insights for Using a Short Link we discuss how short links have a critical effect on digital advertising strategies.
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