So, you’re posting links on Twitter to your blogs, articles, websites, newsletters like you’re supposed to, and you’re left wondering if anyone is clicking through or even notices your posts. (Hopefully you’re also spending plenty of time communicating and building relationships, too.) There are a lot of link tracking tools out there and bookoos of stats that you can run on your website, but if you don’t have a lot of time or the skills to do this, it can be overwhelming.
I get this question a lot from Twitter users: “Is anyone paying attention to me? Do they even care?” Aside from looking at the number of replies and ReTweets you get, there is a tool that can tell you how many times your links are clicked on. Now as far as telling whether your spouse and children are paying attention to you, you’re on your own.
I’m sure you’ve seen the shortened links to websites using TinyURL.com or Bit.ly. Twitter made these tools a necessecity as many links contain more than 140 characters themselves. Many of these services let you track the number of clicks to a link, so when you tweet “I just posted a new blog, but I’m pretty sure no one cares. Here’s the link anyway: http://bit.ly/F6Z5A,” you can actually find out if someone cares.
I use TweetDeck (a desktop Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn application) and TweetDeck gives you the option of choosing your favorite url shortener (mine is Bit.ly) and linking your account with TweetDeck. So when I’m typing in a link, TweetDeck will shorten my url and Bit.ly will track how many times someone clicks the link.
I am now privelaged enough to know that out of the 1800 Twitter followers and nearly 500 Facebook friends, only 7 of them were remotely interested in my new blog post at 4 in the morning, but when I posted a similar link at 6pm, I got 90 click-throughs. That tells me that my audience isn’t around at 4am, but they are after work.
Experiment with times of the day, days of the week, phrasing, posting frequency and see what combination gives you the best result.
Link TweetDeck to Your Bit.ly Account
- Go to Bit.ly (or is.gd, TinyURL, or twurl) and create an account if you haven’t already. (You can use these services without an account, but you won’t be able to track your links.)
- In Bit.ly, go to your Account. (upper R-H corner) and copy the API Key. (I assume the other services have similar options.)
- Open TweetDeck’s Settings. (Click on the wrench in the upper R-H corner of Tweetdeck).
- From TweetDeck Settings, click on the Services tab.
- Enter your Bit.ly username and API key and save the settings.
- In the Tweetdeck Compose Box, select the box in the lower R-H corner that says “Auto Shorten URLs”
- Tweet as normal.
- Login to http://bit.ly/ to monitor the number of clicks each link receives.
If you already monitor your links, how else do you use them in your social media strategy?