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Tracking and Automatically Shortening Links

May 15, 2020
Tracking and Automatically Shortening Links

Tracking and Automatically Shortening Links, is it possible?

Link shorteners are a posting strategy that best benefits everyone who uses social networks and not only. There are tons of Link Shortening websites and each one of them is a simple, yet powerful tool to connect and engage the audience. 

We’ve all at least once been in a conversation where we saw an extremely-crazy-long URL and wondered whether that’s was written by mistake, that’s a virus, or just too ugly to be reposted on our social networks. So, among the adventures we have experienced while looking or using a short link, there’s the Link Shortenings to the rescue. Being a part of the digital world, especially when you are trying to boost your brand’s awareness, it’s important to customize your desired URLs in a click.

customize your desired URLs

Tracking and Automatically Shortening Links

Here’s a list of the benefits you can take advantage of while using any Link Shortener:

  • Easier to share and remember

As we already know, there are many keywords on a link. But, except for the SEO reasons, you just don’t want to share extremely long URLs on your social media posts. A shortened link is very eye-catchy and people can remember it easily. 

  • Detailed and live click data

Keep track of the real-time traffic on your website. Get a better understanding of what your audience prefers most and easily target them in the future. 

Gather important data like the number of clicks, devices used, location, date and time, etc. After doing that, you can control the effectiveness of the content you add to your social media posts.

  • Get rid of the ‘Read more’ on Facebook or save yourself some characters on the stingy Twitter.

Optimize your social media captions. Maybe you want your Facebook status updates to be short and precise, but that’s risky when you want to add a link, right? Also, Twitter only allows 280 characters in total. Imagine how much space a long URL gets. 

In both cases, tracking and automatically shortening links will only help your social accounts. 

Important fact:

According to Rebrandly, branded links are proven to increase click-through rates (CTR) by up to 39% because people trust link shorteners!

Let’s check out this example. Which of the following links do you think is easier to share on social media? In this case, we’re using Bitly:

Exactly. This is the fastest someone can think when it comes to working smart and developing a professional strategy.

Tracking and Automatically Shortening Links with Publer

According to your preferences, Publer can shorten all the links you add to the dashboard, schedule for the future, or just post automatically, including those in post descriptions.

Tracking and Automatically Shortening Links with Publer
Tracking and Automatically Shortening Links on Publer

We have currently partnered with 6 Link Shorteners, respectively Bitly, Rebrandly, PixelMe, Switchy, JotUrl, RocketLink and RetargetKit.

*Click on their names to learn how to use them.

UTM Tracking Parameters

Traffic sources are easily measured with the help of special codes that you can insert at the end of a link. There are 5 different tags that you can track: the campaign, the medium, the source, the content, and term (they’re all set on Publer by default, and you can customize them anytime).

Let’s understand them better:

The Campaign name– Tracks the performance of a specific campaign. For example a sale, an event, etc.

The medium– Tracks details of the content a user visits the website. For example referral marketing, email, etc. 

The source– Tracks the source of the traffic. For example Google, Twitter, etc.

The term– Tracks from which keywords a user visits the website. For example technology.

The content– Track which of the multiple links containing the same source was clicked 

These are the top benefits of using UTM parameters to help build a better marketing plan and campaign:

All about tracking..

  • See where your visitors are coming from so you can focus more on that source and empower its visibility
  • Check what your visitors are more interested in so you can create more similar campaigns
  • Build a bridge between the effort of your social media posts and Google Analytics
  • Track results and measure full statistics on each of your Marketing Campaigns on social media.

And a lot more.

Publer can also automatically add UTM parameters at the end of each link so that users can analyze the traffic in Google Analytics. Check out our tutorial on how to apply UTM parameters to learn how to make your tracking and automatically shortening links easier.

Read Also

How To Track Twitter Mentions

Metrics That Matter: Reach vs. Impressions

Link in Bio – A powerful feature for Instagram

15 Publer Features & Tools That Will Boost Your Ecommerce Sales

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