The business trend of blogging is spreading nowadays. A blogger is a person who manages a personal Internet account called a blog to share thoughts, interesting articles, or news. There are various fields in which bloggers can operate. It can be anything from professional business advice to simple fashion tutorials on how to use makeup.
Bloggers manage different Internet sources. The most common ones are:
- CMS (i.e., websites on WordPress),
- Instagram accounts, and
- YouTube channels.
When launching a personal blog, every blogger desires to take off as soon as possible. Therefore, they add banners to their websites and launch advertising campaigns to promote their blogs. A link shortener, which opens the way to advanced methods of engaging users, can be one of the tools for promoting a blog. URL shortening is a technique that is covered not only by businesses but also by all areas of life.
So, what about applying short links to blogging? The URL shortener inevitably transforms the way in which bloggers operate.
Best Practices for Bloggers when Using Short Links
1. Short links for descriptions
- Social media
Descriptions on social media are supposed to include links to an external source. It can be a website, a form submission, a relevant giveaway, or any other kind of the site that you need to have people follow.
The Instagram bio finds favor in adding a link, which needs to be promoted. That is useful as it’s the only active link on Instagram. By using short links in the bio, you knock off two points in one day:
- The number of link characters is limited, so a short link helps you save space.
- A short link is readable and memorable, so the visitors understand the link content at once. The customized short URL increases brand trust and recognition. Having two bios, one of which includes a link “goo.gl/jdsHws4” and the other, “yourname.com/giveaway,” the second account inspires trust and respect more. Do you agree?
- YouTube
YouTube bloggers provide useful information by making videos. The bloggers turn all the necessary tools, services, websites, and products described in a video into the links and add them to the video description. Such a method helps followers find a wanted source.
As in the example above, a link like “yourname.com/top-videos” attracts more than a generic one. Except for essential sources, bloggers always add links to their social media accounts. With the shortening feature, you can track the success of the links and conclude which social media have been the most visited.
2. Retargeting
Retargeting technology is used to show ads to users who have already made some actions on the website but have not completed them.
With the help of retargeting advertising, you catch potential customers. Implement retargeting for the short links. Short.cm shows ads to visitors who have clicked your short-branded link. As a result, users who were earlier interested in your blog/social media account are most likely to complete the action.
For example, if people surf the Internet and come across a short link to your blog and haven’t followed it or submitted a form, the ad with your profile will be displayed in their news feed.
3. Campaign Tracking
As your campaign most likely will be conducted on several media platforms, you need to understand where the traffic comes from. With the help of UTM parameters, you learn the certain source, the type of ad, the name of the campaign, and the keyword from which a user has visited a page. Thus, to build the link for each of the platforms, you just need to put the names to the parameters. For example, utm_source=linkedin, utm_medium=cpc, utm_name=giveaway, utm_term=social_media.
The Campaign Tracking tool lets you estimate the behavior of the audience to mark up the further steps of promotion. The statistical data helps you to conclude which source is the most popular among the visitors, and which ad they have been hooked on. The feature is free for all Short.cm users. Sign up to test it!
4. A/B Testing
In case you manage the Blog on a website, you might want to test the visitors' behavior after making some changes on a website design. It's where the A/B testing features come you in handy.
Thinking about which improvement to implement, you decided to change the position of a CTA button to make it more noticeable. However, you can't change the button, as it's just your gut feeling and you can't know whether users will like improvements or not. To approve or cancel the hypothesis, create a test variant of the landing page with the new position of the button.
A/B Testing allows you to:
- learn how new components on the page influence users' behavior;
- concentrate financial resources on elements that are already working for your audience;
- improve the conversion of business metrics (revenue).
5. Auto-sharing
After the link is shortened, share it on social media to make your customers aware of the updates. Users see news on the timeline and click on a link to find out more.
Insight: By using Short.cm, share short links straight from the dashboard. Choose the offered social networks and click the share button.
Insight: Short.cm integrates with Buffer service for automatic sharing. When a link is shortened, it will be sent to the specified social channels automatically. The advantage is that the post will contain a link title, description, and a web page preview that is essential for grabbing followers' attention.
By choosing Buffer, you can not only send links to the eight social networks but also schedule posts.
Short.cm provides a 7-day free trial for all the price plans. Sign up to test if the features fit your needs!
Start Shortening Links
Get started for freeThe article is about:
- Promote a personal brand.
- Short links for promoting blog.
- Engage users to the blog with short links.
Read also:
Join the conversation