http://cli.gs/zuLYT3 which is much easier to include in a short tweet.)
There are a number of such services, but I've chosen Cligs.
I like using Cligs for two reasons. One is that I can rename the shortcut myself if the name I like has not been chosen. So I've created:
- http://cli.gs/tlwtop - enterprise education blog, The Learning Workforce
- http://cli.gs/48hfpsjc - summer film festival, the San Jose 48 Hour Film Project
- http://cli.gs/amyo - singer/songwriter friend, Amy Obenski
Figure 1: Cligs traffic metrics
But there's a bigger reason to use a URL shortener for posting links. If you choose one that supports it (and most of them do), you can track the response to the link after you post it. This is the major reason I use Cligs. I like the metrics they collect and I like the presentation.
Cligs shows me the total number of responses I've had to the link, it draws me a graph of activity over time, and it shows me a world map with responses depicted by their contry of origin.
So the image I see of a link posted to a friend's online film looks like the page you see in Figure 1. (click on the image for a closer look).
Figure 2: A clig with multiple
recent mentions.
A page that has been mentioned several times in the preceding weeks, might look a bit more like the second image you see in Figure 2. You can see the upward blips that occur around the time the link was mentioned on Twitter or Facebook.
What's especially useful about the map is that you can see how many of the mentions came from each of the red countries. In the live map, putting the mouse over a country will produce a flyout such as the one you can see in Figure 2.
Below this graphical depiction of activity, there is a list of specific sites from which the clig was accessed. For instance, if there is a specific page on LinkedIn that exposes the clig, you'll see some number of clicks that originated there.
The information is advisory only and there are often assumptions about the origins of the traffic, but the overall story it tells is a useful one.
I must point out that there are something like a dozen similar services and you can easily find a comparison of their features. I used bit.ly for a while, but switched back to Cligs in spite of the things I find tedious about their site.
If you're interested in knowing how widely your voice carries in the social media space, it's a good idea to choose a URL shortner and use it for a while to track responses. You'll certainly find something interesting as you do.
...interesting an ironic.
ReplyDeleteI posted this article about two days prior to a security incident that rocked Cligs to its core.
Some vandal compromised the service and hijacked many of the most prominent links that have been created with cligs over the recent months.
Turned out to be an excellent opportunity for Cligs to move to a new server and to deploy a new design that was almost ready.
Today it seems that the server isn't ready though. I'm getting 25 seconds of delay in getting pages that I click to.
The update (and migration to new server) isn't finished as I write, but I really hope that response time will improve significantly when all is said and done.
I have to say that for about the next week, I'll be using bit.ly for my URL shortening needs. Will return to Cligs if and when things improve there again.
---v
...I am using Cligs again as a service. My statistics from prior to the incident are gone, but the response time is addressed, and things seem to be working okay over there.
ReplyDeleteI feel a sense of ownership now that I've "weathered the storm" with the Cligs creator.
We wish him well and will continue to share the word whenever people have questions about this.
---v
great post! Hey, I have a slight problem. I created a clig but it's no longer working. I looked online to see if I could view my clig but it only display the origin at youtube. Any advice?
ReplyDelete