Don’t Waste Your Time
One of the reasons many people hesitate to implement a social media marketing plan is that most of the time, it is difficult to measure results and efforts can go unmeasured (which makes it a hard sale for a lot of people).
When we use Twitter, we share links and due to the nature of the limitation to 140 characters, we employ URL shorteners (such at TinyURL, bit.ly, is.gd, hex.io, etc) where you enter your long URL and it spits out a shorter, more Twitter-friendly or SMS/Text friendly URL.
But How Do I Measure?
Instead of just making a shortened URL, try out BudURL which has a built-in metrics system that refreshes every ten seconds to show you the traffic from the URL:
More detailed information is given, including IP addresses (similarly to when you comment on a blog) of people who click through which is how you measure where your traffic is coming from, namely geographically:
A Step in the Right Direction
I think BudURL is making a big step in the right direction and I hope other services become easier to track so people know what efforts they make are working and which are not. Some people swear by Twitter, others disavow it and either way, there’s finally some trackability (yeah, I can use made up words) to social media, starting with a simple URL shortener.
