“URL Shortening give you valuable fresh air in your marketing strategy.”
Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) already occupied one of the core components of the modern web and it serves as the helper of your content marketing. Shortened URLs can improve your content marketing efforts and help you track those efforts more efficiently. URL Shortening is a technique used to make your chosen URL look more simple by using URL shortener, a web tool that will considerably reduce the length of the original link to the condensed version of it. Since the first URL shortener, TinyURL , came out in 2002, this tool has been commonly used across social media, emails, and company websites. We've summed up everything about the benefit of URL shortener:
Ability to Track the Performance
Most URL shorteners provide analytical data. The real secret weapon when it comes to URL shorteners is that most come with tracking analytics needed for analyzing social campaigns. Shortened URLs can be tracked in real-time, with information on audience demographics, engagement rate, and click-through rate available instantly.
For example, you can feel this benefit by using URL shortener Bit.ly. It allows registered users access to stats on any link ever shortened using their service. You can go beyond a number of clicks and see your traffic behavior. The parameters, Urchin Tracking Modules, and other tactics provided by the URL shortener can deliver plenty of information to the marketer.
Shortened Links Are More Attractive
Shortened URLs tend to blend in while long links tend to stick out in an unprofessional way. This kind of URL commonly exists in this world that a long link looks less aesthetic. People actually care about the attractiveness of URLs, including those clean-looking and visually appealing links. It’s not only just about “pretty link”, but shortened links give a more trustworthy impression. Besides, you will have more space on your publications and easy to share those links.
URL Shortening Customize your Brand
Another advantage of shortened links it will allow your company name embedded in them. So connected to what we’re talking about in the previous paragraph about a trustworthy link, custom URLs can convince your audience that the link is secure. By customizing brand in your shortened URLs, you will increase its credibility. Then the audience also believes the links will lead them to the intended site. So you can build brand awareness for the audience. You can take a look at an example used by some companies; Time Inc.’s vanity URL is “ti.me” and Moz has a vanity URL of “mz.cm.” People will recognize instantly which company throws out those shortened URLs to the public.
Shortened Links Track Dark Social
Shortened links can make use of the tracking analytics feature. For example, Bit.ly will help you get a grip on the number of link shares you were previously unable to track. The dark social shares are actually affecting your marketing performance. Based on research by RadiumOne, dark social sharing accounts for 59 percent in North America, 77 percent in Europe, 69 percent in worldwide, and 32 percent of consumers reported that they will only share content through dark channels. So yes, your inability to track dark social shares can be a huge problem.
URL shorteners will give access to you to head into the source of dark social content. As a starter, you can take the best advantages of shortened links because they take up fewer characters. Most link shorteners include real-time analytics on clickbacks (a rate calculated by dividing the number of clicks on all shared links for a web site by the number of total shares for the web site) that gives you data without you needing to invest in a full-service analytics dashboard. In addition, they also allow for segmentation of the incoming data. The insight to dark social shares will give you a more accurate picture of what your content is actually being used for.
Conclusion
Shortened URLs are commonly used in social media, so it becomes the only kind. By using the technique of shortening links, you will have the ability to aggregate your metric data, customize your brand URL, increase sharing and click-through rates and monitor dark social sharing more effectively. URL shortening most likely is definitely worth considering for its benefits. However, it’s up to you to decide if this marketing tool is a right fit for your brand or not. So if your marketing team has not used the URL shortener for the links you want to share, the time is now.
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Reference
https://eclincher.com/blog/5-benefits-of-url-shorteners-2/
https://www.livechatinc.com/url-shortener/8-reasons-why-to-use-url-shortener