HOW TO USE BITLY

(A URL SHORTENER)

Quick Tips for MarketingProfs AffiliatesSeptember 26, 2012

What you’ll learn

bitly

Why use it?

How to use it.

How to track your results with bitly.

Two reasons to use bitly

1. bitly gives you metrics. When you shorten your links into bitly URLs, you’ll

be able to see how many clicks they’re getting.

2. Twitter only allows 140 characters per tweet. bitly offers a way to take

those long URLs you’d like to share via Twitter, and shorten them.

Here I’ve put a long URL into Twitter,

and it has used up 119 characters.

This doesn’t leave much room to say

anything about the link in my tweet.

If someone RTs this, they won’t have

space to say anything about it either.

How to use bitly

Sign up at www.bitly.com

Or, without signing up, you can

paste a URL in the field on the

home page, and get a shortened

link. (However, we recommend

creating an account. You’ll see

why in a minute.)

How to use bitly

I’ve created an account. Each time I log in, I see this page.

Here is the long URL I want to shorten – a monster, eh?

http://www.marketingprofsu.com/course/2064/social-media-

marketing?utm_expid=31364234-

7&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marketingprofsu.com%2Fcourse%2Flist%2F

I click on the field (where the arrow is), and paste in the long URL.

How to use bitly

As soon as I hit

enter, bitly has

taken the link and

shortened it.

Click on the

shortened link to

copy it.

How to use bitly

Now, we can take our shortened link from bitly back to Twitter, and

enter it in the tweet field.

Here is a screenshot where I’ve put the

shortened URL into Twitter.

I now have room for a description and my

affiliate promo code.

If someone RTs this, there is some room for

them to add their own thoughts too.

How to track response to your links

So how can you tell if anyone clicked on your shortened link that you

broadcasted through Twitter? Two steps:

1. You’ll need to

have created an

account with bitly

to see this page.

2. Just click “Stats”

to view your

metrics. Easy!

Your latest shortened

links are here.

This tells you how

many people

clicked on other

shortened links

that started with

the same URL.

This tells you how many people

clicked on your shortened link.

This tells you how

many people

saved the link.

More information about bitly

If you need help with bitly, click “Help” in their footer, or go to:

http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase

Good luck with posting your affiliate tracked links!

Feedback? Suggestions? Questions?

Write to us at partners@marketingprofs.com