Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly how many people click the link you add to Twitter? If your link goes to your own website, your stats should track that, but there is a way to discover what’s happening in real time.

That means that you are able to post something on Twitter (or elsewhere) with a URL that links back to your site and then track the results in real time. If you really want to ramp up your knowledge of how people react to your ads, then this technique is a gold mine.

Use the free program http://bit.ly. Register a free account. This way, you are able to get full statistics on every link that you post. In addition, you are able to create meaningful links as they allow you to customize them. Remember that if you do intend to customize them, keep them short.

Bit.ly is a great tool for creating short URL’s especially on places such as Twitter, where every character counts. The ability to track activity in real time is a huge bonus.

Not only does it track in real time, it shows statistical information, such as the countries the clicks are coming from, plus it shows the text of links you’ve posted and whether the links have been shared with others (ie retweeted). The statistics also show you the traffic over the past week or past month, so if you’ve created a campaign, you can track it over time.

I’ve found one of the useful things about this is the ability to test headlines. (Twitter is great for testing headlines due to the 140 character restriction). You can use the statistical data to see which headline has performed best.

In the first snapshot (below), you can see a listing of posts I made last month and you can see the number of clicks on each of those posts. From this data I can see how many sales came directly from Twitter, or if a headline successful or a failure.

Bit.ly stats for Twitter post

In the second snapshot (below), you can see more detail. In bit.ly, you click on the info button under the link you want to see in detail and then review the results. As you can see by this particular snapshot one particular day performed exceptionally well. As I only posted a single link per day per product, it’s easy for me to track back through my posts on Twitter and see which one was the super successful one. This is then the headline I took into other marketing campaigns.

Bit.ly detailed stats page

So, if you want to track your clicks on Twitter, and have the benefit of doing so in real time, then you should consider the free service of bit.ly to help you.

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Rebecca Habel
Rebecca’s Resource