| 00:00 |
Welcome to another session of a Smarter Business Tips At 10. Today's session is all about branded short URL links. What is a link shortener? What do I mean by branded? And what do I mean by tracking? I'll get straight into it. Now, if you think that this business tip is going to add value, give us a thumbs up, that's awesome, love it, spread the word. |
| 00:27 |
So, a URL shortener is simply where the software takes a link like that, which is incredibly long and shortens it down to that, so you can email it, send out messages, so forth. That's fantastic. Google URL Shortener, has been around for quite some time. Since March the 30th, its being decommissioned. So, if you got an existing account you can still use it, but you cannot set up your URL account, a new account. |
| 00:56 |
Here's the thing, that granted it shortens the URL, but doesn't help your branding at all. It just doesn't. So, there's software we use that will help you with your branding, and you're going to be able to track how many clicks you get through. That's the advantage of using this software; you can create a link, brand it and track it quickly through. |
| 01:19 |
I'll show you how it works. These are my Google reviews. Great that we've got so many reviews, all five star. Fantastic, that's just me showing off. But look at the length of that link. And I'm not able to track how many people click when I send out a link. So, here's what it looks like when we've used our branded software short.smarterwebsites.com.au/google-reviews. It actually names what it is. |
| 01:52 |
We use this in emails. I'll just show you quickly one of those emails. When I'm touching base with a client for the first time, if we're local, I want to promote the fact that we're local as well. So, I've got a link through to my map. I also then have a link through to my Google Reviews, and I want to show off that we are an Australian based team and there's a link through to my team page. |
| 02:19 |
My team page URL is actually not that long anyway if I just sent out a normal link. But I want to track how many people click on this when I send this email out. Not only that, we offer a free website and SEO audit. So, I've created link tracking for that. That is a bit hard to see but it's short.smarterwebsites.com.au/web_report_e. The E denoting that this link is only in this email. So, I can specifically track the click throughs. Makes sense? |
| 03:02 |
That's one way we use it. Now, another way, another situation is we've got a direct debit request form online. Again, the URL is a little bit ugly. So, over here, you can see we only just created this a week or so ago, direct debit. It actually makes sense what the link is, what it relates to. I can just copy that and then paste it in an email or I can share it on a social platform and so forth. You get in this particular software to name the link title so everything makes sense, so a year or so down the track you know exactly what everything is. |
| 03:44 |
Now, there's a whole host of other elements that you can do. Now, the software that I'm actually using is free one, the reason I cut charge. You can upgrade to a paid plan. I'll show you that shortly. So, let's go through other scenarios. These are all my links. I'm being totally transparent here. Let's scroll down a little bit. Our reviews on Facebook only had five click throughs. My Google Reviews get a lot more click throughs. I can share this via social media platforms direct. If we just have a look at the stats. This is the sort of useful information that you can get; how many redirects, how many clicks done by humans, where the clicks came from, whether it was Facebook or direct, what countries, what browsers, and whether it's mostly on a desktop or a mobile. |
| 04:48 |
Depending on how you're using this software, the amount of information you can get is really good. This is at the free little. So, there's a whole other layer of sophistication with the paid plans. I'll just show you the name of the software. It's called Short.cm. Absolutely brilliant stuff. Now, we just quickly run through some of the features and the integrations. |
| 05:14 |
There's a whole host of elements that can be done with this. Multiple domains and sub domains. You'll need to get your web [inaudible 00:05:21] set up a what we call C-name. I've used short.smarterwebsites, you can use yes.yourdomainname, or whatever it is you so choose. Your webby will have to do that for you. A lot of details, statistics as I've gone through. You can set up team links, geo targeting, and so forth and have the link expire as well, which could be useful for special offers. But again, you'd have to upgrade to a paid plan for that. |
| 05:51 |
It integrates with Zapier, and there's a whole other level of stuff that you can integrate it with there, we don't bother. The Google Chrome browser extension is particularly handy. There's the plans. As I said, I'm happy with the free plan. But, that's a decision that I make when I'm choosing the software that I use to do certain functions. Is it easy to set up and manage? Is it cost effective, as in can you get a free plan initially? But then if you want to upgrade at a later stage, will it do other sophisticated elements? This certainly fits that. So, Short.cm is a winner. That's back to all of my links. |
| 06:41 |
That's it. That's a wrap. So, I'm hoping that that has added value and will make a difference for you. If you think a friend or a colleague will benefit from this, give us a thumbs up, that's awesome, love it, spread the word. I'll also load this video along with the transcript to my website. You can just go to smarterwebsites.com.au and you can check out this and hundreds of other blog posts. I hope that helps. If you need any help give me a shout out. So, that's Peter Butler from Smarter Websites. Go and work smarter. |
