That image above shows one of the ugliest yet most powerful pieces of information on the internet. It shows a URL, or link, address or dubdubdub, whatever you call it.
It’s also the most powerful thing you and your business have access to.
You see, you don’t really need to know the in’s and out’s of http://www…. In fact, even the inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t really like the format.
But it’s here to stay so here we are.
This post is going to show you how to expolit the URL link to-
- Increase traffic to your site.
- Make your online brand more professional.
- Explot social media to use the URL.
Increase traffic to your site.
This one is super easy. Any time you think you’re showing something off. Either from your site or from your blog, maybe something you’ve found online, go up to the address bar at the top. There you’ll see www.blah or https://www.blah. Click, drag and highlight the link, then copy it either by right clicking and selecting copy or pressing ctrl+c. Now you’ve copied the link, you can post it on any and all of your social sites. Go ahead and try, I’ll wait here.
Once you’ve tried that you can pop in a few words about what the link is and then press post, send, publish etc. How easy was that? Now, you can take any page from your site, any blog article, in fact any link that you like and share it. In marketing we call this a call to action or CTA. What do you want people to do next. If you want more traffic to your site, then post more links form your site with interesting content. Done.
Make your online brand more professional.
This is one of my favourite tricks. It works on Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn for sure. Not Twitter, but try it out on other networks and platforms too.
Go and copy and paste a link again, using one of the platforms above. Next, after it’s populated a little box and made a very professional looking social post, delete the link. That’s right, delete all that horrible http://www.thisisawebpagecom/this-is-the-post-and-it-goes-on-forever-and-looks-awful. Does your cool, professional looking social post stay there, without the URL link? It sure as hell does, now you can type in a bit of blurb and people can still click on the link. Threfore, you can present a slick professioanl social psot, with a call to action. Driving up traffic and increasing your leads.
Explot social media to use the URL.
Social media is not created by companies as much as you might think. Hashtags (#), @’s, retweets, links, posts, shares etc are all hacks created by constant users and people who want to exploit a platform they’ve been given. So with that, lets use social media to our advantage.
A link can be super long, like the example above. However, we can either delete it, as we saw or in cases like Twitter where you NEED a link there, we can shorten it.
Twitter has a maximum of 140 characters. If you post a long link you’re going to use up some of those charecters. Its ok though, Twitter will automatically shorten your link down so it only uses 22 carecters. Or you can use something link TinyURL or Hoorsuite to shorten it. Nice.
Lastly, if you go to Facebook, LinkedIn or G+ and enter a new post, you can just type the address in, even without all the wording. Try this, go a new post and just type https://marketme.co.uk. Press post and there you have just the link, no formatting or images. These links are super useful in comments, or if you post a photo for example but you want a link to another site too.
So, there we go. Everything about the URL link. Seriously though, start using these badboys. Post them on as much content as you can (but don’t overdo it!!) and you see the increase. But as always, content is king, so make sure what you’re positng is relevant and useful!!
Michael Killen is the founder of Devon Digital Design. He believes that all businesses can start finding high quality customers online, with his websites, SEO and social media. Remember to follow him on Twitter for tips on how to find more customers online.
Or you can download his FREE E-BOOK on Finding and keeping high quality customers.