Online Marketing Tips Video: Twitter Tips - URL Shorteners, Blogging & ReTweeting

By Li Evans

This week for our Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing Video, I'm discussing some Twitter Tool that you can integrate into your strategy to get a better handle on what's happening with all those URL's you are tweeting out.

Full Twitter Tips Video Transcript after the jump....

Twitter Tips - URL Shorteners, Blogging & ReTweeting - Video Transcript

Hi and welcome back to Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing. I'm Li Evans of Serengeti Communications and Search Marketing Gurus. I'm back today with some more Twitter Tool Tips! Yes, Twitter, you know everyone is using it, Oprah, Shaq, everybody, so why not use it in a way that you can understand whether its working for you or not. So lets get to it.

Three tips. I've got a URL Shortener and two tools that can work with that URL shortener to give you a better idea about what's going on with the URLs that you are putting out into your Tweetstream. So lets take a look at it.

Utilizing URL Shorteners that Measure Your Engagement

First is the URL Shortener and that's Cligs - www.CLI.gs, and what Cligs is, is again a URL Shortener. So if you have a really long URL that's more than 140 character or almost is 140 characters long you can put that URL into CLIGS and it will shorten it down to maybe about 15 to 20 characters. Then you have more room to put some information into your tweet to go along with that link.

So how it is different than any other URL shortener is that 1) It doesn't hijack your URL like a Digg or an OWLY will. Those two will actually put bars up when it redirects the URL to your site. The person who is looking at that URL will click that URL but not see your URL, they will see the Digg URL or the OWly URL and a lot of times they don't even recognize that is even happening when they are bookmarking they are bookmarking the Owly or Digg URL. Cligs doesn't do that. When it redirects you to the site that the URL is suppose to go to , people see your URL. So its not high-jacking your URL.

 The other great thing CLIgs does is that it filters out the human clicks from the bot clicks. A lot of URL shorteners don't do that so you aren't going to get a true grasp on who's really, real people, clicking on your URL. 

It also gives you some great information about where in the world these people are clicking from and also what types of social sites are they clicking from such as FirendFeed or Facebook or Twitter. It will give you that information all about who's clicking those shortened URLs from Cligs. 

The other thing that allows it to integrate with these other two tools is that Cligs gives you an API key, which is great because you can use that Cligs key to integrate with cligs account through TweetMeme and through TwitterFeed which are the next two tools I'm going to talk about.

Utilizing TwitterFeed & Cligs to Get Data On Your Blog Posts

So let's take a look at TwitterFeed. I've talked about TwitterFeed before. TwitterFeed is great. It allows you to hook your blog up to your tweetstream. Any time you put out a new blog post it will be automatically posted to your tweetstream. Because Cligs offers an API, and TwitterFeed allows you to use that API you can integrate the two. This way you are getting a lot more data about who's clicking to see your blog posts.

It gives you a little bit more information that might not be carried over if people are clicking from applications such as TweetDeck of Seismic Desktop. A lot of times that information isn't coming over in a URL but you can actually see that information that it's coming from Twitter in the Cligs environment. Sot that's the great thing you can use with TwitterFeed and Cligs.

Integrating TweetMeme & Cligs to Promote Your Online Content

Third tip I have for you is to use TweetMeme. TweetMeme is a site that will let you know what are the most popular tweets that are going out there, what things are being tweeted over and over again. Basically to encourage that to happen with your blog posts or your content, videos, pictures things that you have out there that you can control, you put a little widget on your blog or on your website.

Its a little piece of code that puts this TweetMeme widget on your content and it allows people to just click that little widget and it retweets out the URL that you've programmed into the TweetMeme. And that's how things can start to get viral and popular and more people can see it. The great thing again is that TweetMeme allows you to integrate with Cligs, through the Cligs API.

So those are your three tips for Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing. I'm Li Evans of Search Marketing Gurus and Serengeti Communications. As always you can find a transcript of this video at SearchMarketingGurus.com. We'll see you next time.

Comments

[Nick Stamoulis]

Part of participating with social media is re tweeting. Eventually the favor will be returned.

[Tom Lindstrom]

Thanks for the tips! Twitter is a cool tool for marketing online but the hard part is how to do it correctly.On my Wordpress blog I use a plugin called "Tweetmyblog" that posts an update to my Twitter every time I write a new post.

There is one downside to this, there will only be my own content if I don´t go out to find some other useful content from other bloggers.

Also, have you heard of "The Twitter Method" by Jack Humphrey and what do you think of it?

[susan01]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

http://businesseshome.net

[John]

Awesome information. Thank you so much.

[Dave]

Thanks for sharing, i will try using tweeter on my blog :)

[postcard marketing]

Great advice. I've always thought about using twitter to promote my online business but i never come around it. This video has given me a glimpse and a reminder to look into twitter more.Thanks

Amaechi from http://www.wealthwithpostcards.com

[SEOConsulting]

I still find it amusing that many people have not recognized that Twitter is a legitimate component of any marketing plan. Social media is proving to be THE driving force in search engine marketing.

[Tom Troughton]

Thank you for your twitter suggestions. I find Twitter to be a great tool for marketing. I like to pose a questions and start conversations that will be of interest to my followers.

[Gail]

Thanks for the great post, you made some valid points and I like what you said. Twitter is here to stay, I have to say that my best leads and response come from my Twitter and Facebook friends so am totally into the Twitter and social media.
Thanks for sharing
Gail

[marketing mix]

Wow! Nice collection of info here, agreed twitter is good for marketing, if you use it correctly like anything else. Thanks for the great Info -

Dennis 4 marketing p's

[Raul of AustinSEO]

information-packed content here! I think twitter is the most effective social media site for everyone out there and url shorteners such as cligs and bit.ly are also useful to shorten veryyy long urls. keep useful information coming, Li!

[John]

I used a Firefox add on called Puny Url and it wrecked my site in Google because it was using 302 redirects instead of 301.

[Aly]

Hi, thanks for sharing the tips. It would be interesting to know how many people actually read other twitters and not just spend time tweeting their own message out hoping others would read them. Aly

[Luis Mathews]

Nice post. Its a little piece of code that puts this TweetMeme widget on your content and it allows people to just click that little widget and it retweets out the URL that you've programmed into the TweetMeme. Thanks for sharing.

[SEO]

Quote: "Part of participating with social media is re tweeting. Eventually the favor will be returned."

It`s true.

[Andy Michaels]

Thanks for the tips! I find it really helpful that I can update Twitter and Facebook as I post on my blog. It's a time-saver. Now to hunt for other content..

[Robert Phillips]

Hey Li I thank you for giving such wonderful tips about twitter. Although, I know about Cligs and twitter feed I gained some important and useful knowledge tweetmeme to promote online content. I believe that you have sound expertise about twitter and other social media websites. I look forward to see some more post on latest twitter tools.

[2Go Media]

Social medias like twitter is an effective way of advertising your products and services to your followers. Twitter is an awesome tool that even Hollywood superstars, famous athletes and rock stars use them to update their fan base which is of course directs to their websites if necessary.

[Net Millionaire]

URL shorteners are really something everyone should learn nowadays with the popularity of Twitter and other microblogging sites. I know Tweeting is still quite undermined by a lot of marketers, but, hey it doesn't really hurt to try it, people. :)

Thanks for sharing this, your article's really good.

[Rahul Batra]

Great tips of using twitter. I always prefer twitter to generate traffic for my site and for get in touch with my friends.

[Knutselen Winter]

Thanks for sharing this post! I always use social media like twitter and facebook to generate traffic for my site