Marketing Tip: bitly - A great tool for tracking interest

I'm really rushed today, but I wanted to get a quick post out. In my re-worked portion of the site is a "Resources Tab". I'll be going over each of these resources in the future but for today I want to discuss one that I can do quickly.....bitly.

This site does two things:

• Takes a long URL and makes it shorter
• Tracks clicks to that shortened URL

I suggest that every time you make a link and in particular:

• When tweeting
• As a signature in a blog comment
• As a signature in a forum

That you first make it a bitly link.

It's very simple to use, and like most great things on the Internet is 100% free. Basically you paste your long URL in a box - and it returns you a short URL. As people click on the link, bitly records this information. By watching bitly hits you can see who is interested in what topics.

As I mentioned, I'm rushed today so I'll post on the kinds of results you get from using bitly in a future post. But for now, do the following:

1. Sign up for bitly.
2. Take the URL for this post and make a bitly out of it.
3. Tweet about this post and include the bitly link.

I'll report back in a few days what the results were.