The Importance of the URL Shortener in Social Media Marketing

If you plan on using social media for marketing you better understand the importance of a URL shortener for posting your content.

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Brands start using social media channels as a part of their marketing strategies more and more often. This helps to reach a wider audience owing to social media platforms though it does not mean replacing SEO strategy. SNS marketing appears as an addition to the traditional SEO techniques included in the company’s strategy for achieving better results and boosting sales.

 

What every marketer needs to know about social media is that it’s ‘fast’. You have to be quick to engage and that means short content – even your URLs.

 

Several years ago, brands started to experience the advantages of social networks means for businesses. However, the approaches for posting content and reaching the target audience have been gradually transforming over time. One of those is the utilization of the URL shortener for creating more aesthetic links.

 

The importance of URL shorteners is getting rather substantial as it brings plenty of benefits and allows for creating posts of better quality. When the post has an appealing link that does not take half of its length, readers are more likely to pay attention to that social media announcement and even share it.

The importance of social media marketing

 

The variety of social media platforms is so broad so that the companies may choose the preferred means that best match the purposes and specifics of the brand. For instance, if visuals are important to your business, then Instagram and Youtube might be the most appropriate. If you plan to reach a younger audience under 25, then TikTok is probably the best media channel for promotion.

 

In case your business is targeted at professionals in a certain industry, then LinkedIn or Twitter would likely meet your expectations. In other cases, Facebook as the largest SNS platform would be useful for promoting business products or services.

 

Creating a business profile on one of those platforms is not enough for people to get to know about you. Keep in mind the effective ways to boost your brand awareness on social media for attracting potential consumers. When more people are aware of your business, the traffic to your website will grow as well.

 

Social media marketing is aimed not only at attracting new prospects but also at keeping the existing consumers loyal. Posting quality content may help users to understand the benefits of your product better and also to learn something they are potentially interested in.

The URL shorteners in social media

 

To create quality content on social channels, it is crucial to understand and implement several simple rules. The first of those tells that the style of the post should match the pace of the media channel. Another rule emphasizes that understanding the audience well is inevitable to provide valuable information to it.

 

The way the post is organized and formatted is as important as the quality of the content itself. The text should not be messy and difficult to read. Thus, the URL shortener comes in handy as it helps the post look neat and appealing. Furthermore, using shrunk links has a range of other benefits.

Benefits of URL shorteners

From visual appeal to better tracking paid backlinks, URL shorteners can be of service in several ways.

 

Not all the links are long or messy though some of them would look considerably better after going through the URL shortener tool. At the same time, the amount of characters gets lower so that some other valuable information could be added to the post. As a rule, the amount of available characters for the post is limited on SNS platforms, especially on Twitter. Short posts are catchy as they do not require much of the reader’s time but provide the core idea of the brand message.

 

Another valuable feature of URL shorteners stands for analytics and click tracking. You will be able to collect data about the number of clicks on the link, the devices used for following that link, and the geographical location indicating where the clicks come from. Note that not all the URL shorteners provide this feature but in most cases it is available.

 

The list of the URL shorteners’ benefits might be complemented by another advantage related to the sharability of concise links. People are more likely to share shortened links to the resources they found useful or interesting.

 

There are also specific URL shorteners that may create branded links. For instance, the first several characters of such a link would mark the brand name or at least its consonants.

Linking in SEO

 

The links and their appearance do matter not only on social media platforms but also on regular websites. In search engine optimization, building natural links is one of the core strategies for ranking the website higher and bringing more visitors to it.

 

There are several ways to enhance the domain authority of your website and bring it higher on the search results page. While asking other brands for backlinking is a great idea but gaining and tracking paid backlinks may considerably accelerate the process. That way you will get more backlinks from authoritative websites that are relevant to your business in a short time period.

 

As a rule, links are embedded on the web pages in the anchor text, so the link itself is not visible to the public. Some companies decide to use links without the anchor text though. In the latter case, the URL shorteners might come in handy as they will help the link to look more aesthetic.

 

The shortened links do not influence the SEO effort, so brands may feel free to use them on their web pages. At the same time, the shortened URLs bring more benefits as they provide opportunities for a better understanding of website traffic analytics.

 

Conclusion

Brands use various methods to improve the user experience both on the company website and social media platforms. One of those is the utilization of URL shorteners that help shrinking links to make them more appealing. Those are especially useful when the links are too long and take a lot of space and characters of the post.

 

Along with the better visual representation of the links, the URL shorteners bring a range of other benefits. One of those is the ability for better performance tracking by collecting data about the number of clicks, the device, and geographical location of users following the link.