Shortened URLs
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It's a double-edged sword. People want to see the links they're clicking, but brevity is key when it comes to marketing and having a link filled to the brim with UTM parameters kinda dampens the experience on certain platforms.
Measuring the ROI of social is also a weird thing for marketers--when bringing numbers in front of management, it's nice to be like, "People clicked on this x amount of times from x platform"
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@dashrender said in Shortened URLs:
@jaredbusch said in Shortened URLs:
@dashrender said in Shortened URLs:
Shortened URLs are/willing to give you that data.
Seriously WTF?
This is not how any of this works.
WTF are you talking about? The shortener certainly can track this data. Wither they do or not is another matter - that is all I was saying.
The shortened URL itself can because it is a URL, but that is not the point of the shortened URL. The shortened URL exists only to not clog feeds that no longer have these issues. is just to redirect you to the long URL will all the added meta data in the URL so that when the destination webserver gets the hit, they servers saves the info into the database to be extracted by their tracking applications to know what was hit.
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@jaredbusch said in Shortened URLs:
@dashrender said in Shortened URLs:
@jaredbusch said in Shortened URLs:
@dashrender said in Shortened URLs:
Shortened URLs are/willing to give you that data.
Seriously WTF?
This is not how any of this works.
WTF are you talking about? The shortener certainly can track this data. Wither they do or not is another matter - that is all I was saying.
The shortened URL itself can because it is a URL, but that is not the point of the shortened URL. The shortened URL exists only to not clog feeds that no longer have these issues. is just to redirect you to the long URL will all the added meta data in the URL so that when the destination webserver gets the hit, they servers saves the info into the database to be extracted by their tracking applications to know what was hit.
I'll agree with that, but it still doesn't invalidate anything I said.
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We can debate the validity of short links, but the fact is that 99 out of 100 people dont care, and even some techs prefer it. It is kind of a pointless thing to debate, because there are alot more positives than negatives for the company.
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@chrisl said in Shortened URLs:
It's a double-edged sword. People want to see the links they're clicking, but brevity is key when it comes to marketing and having a link filled to the brim with UTM parameters kinda dampens the experience on certain platforms.
Measuring the ROI of social is also a weird thing for marketers--when bringing numbers in front of management, it's nice to be like, "People clicked on this x amount of times from x platform"
Right, that is kind of where I am at, wanting to prove that A works better than B from platform C.
You can track where a click came from, but I'd like to have more detailed info.
I have seen people do multiple links to the same content, which is another option, I guess.
So, just kind of seeing what others are doing.
I am assuming there is value in being able to present as much data as possible. And to direct where to funnel the most time/money. AKA, if you get 100 clicks and 95 are from LinkedIn, perhaps that's where you decicate your resources to.
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@irj said in Shortened URLs:
We can debate the validity of short links, but the fact is that 99 out of 100 people dont care, and even some techs prefer it. It is kind of a pointless thing to debate, because there are alot more positives than negatives for the company.
This is basically what I told Bill before he started this thread. I won't click on them most of the time, but there are times when it's simply not an option (not a real other other than just moving beyond that company/product, etc).
And as you said, most people will simply click on them anyhow! -
@brrabill said in Shortened URLs:
You can track where a click came from, but I'd like to have more detailed info.
There are MANY ways to get this without using shortlinks
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@dashrender said in Shortened URLs:
@brrabill said in Shortened URLs:
You can track where a click came from, but I'd like to have more detailed info.
There are MANY ways to get this without using shortlinks
And my point was that if you don't use the shortener for tracking, just as the redirect, then all tracking will happen on the expended URL at the final webserver.
Don't use a shortener service for tracking.
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@jaredbusch said
Don't use a shortener service for tracking.
Right.
While you can track, I'd prefer to just mask the UTM parameters so I can tie it in with all my other website data.
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Another thing I was thinking about was using a plugin I've used in the past (Pretty Link) to just do it on my own website backend.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/pretty-link/
It's a bit more work than something like bit.ly, but probably better in the long run.
