I’ve recently come across a very neat and handy solution which completely changes the way content marketers shorten links, basically making the likes of Bit.ly and Goo.gl rather obsolete and modest. To put it simply Snip.ly allows you to “steal” a small piece of ad space from any website you share on social media.
Why shorten links in content marketing?
Link shorteners come in handy when long URLs are simply … too long. They’re also useful when you don’t want to confuse your audience with long URLs full of technical gibberish. Actually some less tech-savvy users may find basically every link you share a bit confusing if you utilize Google Analytics with UTM tracking codes to measure your content marketing efforts.
Hence, you can shorten your links to make them more user-friendly and also easier to remember if that’s also your goal.
Snip.ly provides you with a ready-made CTA
Before I stumbled upon Snip.ly I used Bit.ly as my major link shortening service provider. It doesn’t do anything more than shortening links with some basic tracking available, which I didn’t need anyway due to the said Google Analytics tracking.
Just as with numerous link shortening services, Snip.ly provides you with a shorter version of any link of your choice. Apart from that it allows you to adorn a shared website with a simple box containing a 140×140 pixel image, a text message and an action trigger in the form of a text link, a button, or a form.
The form action type provides you with a single input in which you can ask users to leave their e-mail address for example. Snip.ly automatically captures and stores submissions. Check out an example here.
Texts and colors are also editable, while the location of the box can be at the top, or at the bottom of the website.
These features make it a ready-made CTA that can be applied to basically any website, with any call-to-action message of your choice.
Sharing other people’s work doesn’t have to hurt
Perhaps most of content marketers hesitate before sharing other people’s work.
It means sending your audience away from your own marketing material, after all. On the other hand it can bring heaps of likes, shares and new followers. As a result it is often a tough decision.
With Snip.ly and a persuasive messaging you can try to redirect those users back to the URL of your choice. Of course only those users who notice the rectangle at the bottom, or at the top of the page can be redirected.
It’s also useful when you utilize guest posting in your work and share links to your work. Bit.ly provides you with a space for a bit of advertisement which may not be allowed in guest posting. Of course it’s visible only to those users who visit the website via your Snip.ly link.
Pawel Piejko
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So, what do you think ?