Deposit Photos
Images are the bane of my existence. Can’t live with them (when I can’t find what I want at the price I want to pay) and can’t live without them, as graphics are a very important part of my marketing efforts. However, I’ve recently found a new image service that offers great pricing on royalty-free images.
Deposit Photos offers millions of high-quality photographs and vector images available at affordable prices to fill all your image needs. All the files offered for sale on their site are protected by intellectual property rights and made available for use in accordance with their royalty-free license. Their libraries are updated daily through contributor uploads that are closely scrutinized for quality and originality.
I’ve discovered images on this site that I haven’t found anywhere else. There are a number of ways to purchase images, from buying credits to buying an ongoing subscription. I chose the credits route, and as of this writing, am paying about 50 cents for each image, as I don’t typically need larger images, although they are available for a higher price. They also offer a free 7-day Trial Subscription so you can try them out.
Like many other image services, they offer a number of parameters to use in your search, but unlike many of the other services, they retain what I have purchased in my account, so if I accidentally delete or misplace a file, I can simply refer to my account and download it again, rather than having to contact customer service for a new download link. And, if you’re searching for a number of images, you can create a lightbox to save your favorites until you decide on just the right images.
Business Builders
I’m in the process of rebranding my biz, as I revealed last week in my ezine. Ever heard the saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears?”
Well, that happened for me this week as I was looking up a resource to send to a client. I ran across Shawn Driscoll’s “Discover Your Profitable Signature Advantage” program, and I thought this was exactly what I needed at this stage in my rebranding process. I’m pretty sure that I now know what my “secret sauce” is, but wanted a little bit of help in walking through the process. It’s inexpensive ($97) and it’s quick (30 days), so if you’re not sure about your signature system, I invite you to enroll. Classes started this week, but you can access the recordings and handouts in the Client Center.
Next, in this rebranding process, I am trying to improve the quality and look for my screencast videos. I ran across David Walsh several months ago and was really blown away by the free screencast video tutorial he offered. Now, he and Peter Garety have hit it out of the park with their new product, Quick Screencast Profits. They have really over-delivered here with great info on how to create a killer screencast video. I also bought one of the upsells for the screencast graphics, as well.
Thirdy, I’m trying to get my first Kindle ebook published. I sat in on a free teleclass that was an upsell to a $1000 program about Kindle publishing. The program looked amazing, but I’m tired of spending $1000 on programs. I’ve found a great resource in Kickstart Kindle Promotion, which gives some different types of promo strategies that hadn’t occurred to me.
Here’s the video that introduces the Kindle publishing program I didn’t purchase, but even this free video contains some great info that you’ll find helpful in you’re publishing on Kindle.
Writing a Headline: 7 Proven Headline Formula Strategies That Sell
Writing a headline seems pretty simple, doesn’t it?
Just give your piece a title that tells what the story is about and you’re done. However, if you want a headline that is compelling to your target market and makes them take action, a bit more work is involved.
The very first step in writing a headline is to uncover every possible benefit of the subject of your content — your product, your service, your program, your article, your book, your special report. This is good preliminary work for any headline formula. The reason is clear: benefits are your best sales tool. Without taking the time to create list of benefits, writing a compelling, action-oriented headline will be more difficult.
Once you have created your list of benefits, then determine your headline formula strategy.
Here are 7 proven strategies in writing a headline that sells:
1. Highlight the ultimate benefit: Determine the most attractive benefit your product offers. What unique advantage does your product give customers? If you’re uncertain, talk to prospects and customers. Give them a short list of 2 to 5 solid benefits that you have come up with, and then ask them to choose just one, or add another if their “ultimate” benefit is missing. By talking with your target market, you’ll get them to identify the one benefit that is of supreme importance to them. It could be a single benefit or, more likely, the “ultimate benefit” of your product. Try to narrow it down to one powerful benefit and then use that as your starting point.
2. Borrow it: This technique “borrows” ideas, words, phrases, and formats from other headlines and adjusts these to suit your situation. I do this all the time from my swipe file of amazing headlines. Simply choose different headlines that you like and combine features of several to create a hybrid that makes sense to your topic. However, be careful and don’t copy someone else’s headline, word for word, as that becomes plagiarism. With your own file of collected headlines, you’ll have a virtual resource center of adaptable ideas and techniques. To start your swipe file, simple search for “headline swipe files” and you’ll find a number of free PDFs of headline resources online.
3. Answer the “how-to” question: We all want to improve ourselves or our lives in some way. The secret with this strategy is to focus on a particular need or want and then promise to fulfill it. However, how-to headline must highlight the benefit or final result, not the actual process itself. So, instead of “How to Stain Your Deck” which sounds like a lot of work, focus on the real motivators, which might be staining your deck quickly and professionally, or “How to Stain Your Deck in a Weekend Like a Pro.” For this formula, simply begin with the words “How to” or “How” then immediately fill in the benefit.
4. Avoidance Behavior: In this strategy, you help people receive what they want while avoiding some pain with a very effective solution, or {Avoid problem} with {my solution}. For example, “End Your Lower Back Pain Forever With These Simple Exercises.”
5. Provocative Question: Ask a question of your reader that relates directly to the major benefit of what you’re writing about. It also must make the reader answer with a resounding “Yes!” or “I’ve got to know more!” Sample headlines might be: “Do You Want to Lose 20 Pounds in Only 30 Days?” or “Turned Down for a Mortgage for a New Home?”
6. Testimonials: Capture the actual words of your most satisfied customers. Somehow, the words of others – people who once were in the same situation, as the prospects themselves – have great power to influence a prospect’s decision to buy. Your first step is to gather any feedback that you may have already collected from customers, and then choose the most benefit-laden statements. You can write the headline in the first person and put quotation marks around it. For example, “If I Can Lose Weight With This Diet, Anyone Can!”
7. Mistakes and Secrets. No one wants to make a mistake, and everyone wants to be “in-the-know” on a secret. For example, “7 Biggest SEO Mistakes Bloggers Make in Each Post” or “5 Secrets to Hiring an Event Planner That Won’t Break the Bank.”
Take some time to think about your headline for your project to ensure that you make it sizzle. Writing a headline can that sells can make all the difference as to whether your email is opened and read, someone buys your product or service, or a visitor downloads your free giveaway from your web site.
Start your headline swipe files here:
102 Headline Writing Formulas by Chris Garrett
101 Headline Formulas that Capture Attention and Get Your Message Read by Peter Sandeen
You’re welcome to use this article on your web site, blog or in your ezine if you include this blurb in its entirety, without modification:
Discover how to stop the client chase and create an online service business drives traffic to your web site with free instant access to 7 proven internet marketing strategies that separate the top 1% of online businesses from the rest by visiting http://www.TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com
Increase Facebook Fans: 10 Killer Posting Tips to Enhance Fan Engagement
Now that you have a Facebook business page, how do you maximize your Facebook marketing and increase Facebook fans and enhance your fan engagement?
Simple. You want to get people talking about you and your brand. The more your fans are talking about you, the more engaged they become, which helps them on the like, know and trust journey for your business and your brand.
The best way to increase your fan engagement is through posts on your Facebook business page. When you begin to engage your fans, you’ll also discover that you will increase Facebook fans as well.
Here are 10 posting strategies you can use in your Facebook marketing to increase Facebook fans and increase your fan engagement:
1. Daily Question: Fill in the kind of question with something pertinent to your industry, like Daily Marketing Question, Daily Health Question, Daily Design Question. You want to make the question provocative and likely to attract strong opinions. I might ask the following: {Daily Marketing Question}: Do you think Pinterest is useful for marketing or a complete waste of time? Tell me your thoughts!
2. Photo of the Day: Again fill in the kind of photo with something related to your industry, like and find a photo that will evoke a strong response. If you can’t find photos, then think about sharing images instead. You can create quote images using quotes from your own materials or from other notables in your industry, or create images that share an upcoming program or new service that you’re offering.
3. Share tips, ideas, and answers to questions. You can have your email marketing program or blog RSS feed program automatically share tips from those two places, However, be sure to share “live” posts on your page at least once a day, and don’t share posts that sell but instead share information that’s valuable to your community.
4. Posting times. Post at times when your target market is likely to be listening. Use Facebook Insights to determine when your fans are actually looking at and responding to your posts. Keep in mind that the times shown are in US Pacific time.
5. Link back to your site. If you’re posting an image that references an upcoming program or new service, for example, you’ll want to note the full URL before the image, since the image itself cannot link to a URL where your fans can get more information.
6. Shorten and track URLs. Want to track the URLs you list in your posts on your Facebook business page so that you can see how they are doing? Use the link shortener service found at bitly or the Pretty Link plugin for WordPress.
7. Succinct content. Even thought you have the option of creating a post of up to 5000 characters, longer posts have been linked to less engagement. Create posts that are 140 characters or less for better fan engagement. Studies have shown that shorter posts get shared more often.
8. Keep conversation going. Don’t leave your fans hanging. Ensure that a regular Facebook marketing practice is to log in daily to visit your page and respond to wall posts, questions, and comments that fans leave on your Facebook business page.
9. Share videos. Visitors love videos, as demonstrated by the popularity of Youtube. Create a quick video to explain something and let your fans get to know you better and post that on your Facebook business page.
10. Recognize individuals. If you’re following these tips, you should be gaining new fans each day. Take a look at your most recent fans and send them an individual message to thank them for becoming your fan or to comment on something about them or their business. They will appreciate the recognition!
Creating a Facebook business page is the easy part. Making it work for your business is a bit more difficult. Start using these strategies today today in your Facebook marketing to increase Facebook fans and enhance your fan engagement.
Jumpstart Your Facebook Fan Page
What are you doing tomorrow, Tuesday, May 1? I’d love for you to join me for an important info-rich call that will help you jumpstart your Facebook business page….
The way we do business has changed forever. Today we live in a more open and connected world, where ordinary people share their lives with one another through social networking platforms, mobile access, online games, and location-based services. With its recent updates, Facebook is now a more popular platform than ever and offers unlimited opportunities to engage more prospects and turn those prospects into clients.
Your success in business hinges on staying ahead of the curve and embracing these changes before they become old news. Discovering how to leverage Facebook for business the RIGHT way is not something you can pick up on by watching from the sidelines, either. Unfortunately, you can no longer just post the same old updates and sharing anything on Facebook without tying your activities to a solid business strategy.
In this program, you’ll discover:
- 3 most effective ways to enhance your bottom-line results (and it’s not what you think!)
- 10 creative ways to brand your business with your timeline image
- 3 secrets to using the apps feature to have your visitors take your most desired action
- 7 strategies to easily ramp up your engagement with your fans
- 5 most effective ways to use Facebook Insights to increase your fan base
- AND MORE!
If you’d like to discover how to grow a truly AUTHENTIC following — faster than you ever dreamed possible, you need to listen to this webcast!
Members of OnlineBizU.com can get the details to join us for this call here.
Not a member of OnlineBizU.com? No problem! Join OnlineBizU.com and you can instantly access the call-in details for this month’s Monthly Expert Call!
Participants live on the call will get live consulting and support and their questions answered! Session is recorded and transcribed for members of OnlineBizU.com.
You don’t want to miss this, {!firstname}!
=======================================
–> DON’T MISS April’s OnlineBizU.com Insider Circle Call…
TUESDAY, May 1, 2012, at 2:00pm Eastern (NY) time (that’s 11am Pacific, 12 noon Mountain, 1pm Central.)
TOPIC: Turn Your Facebook Fan Page Into a Money-Making Machine with Internet Marketing Coach Donna Gunter
This call is *FREE* for members of OnlineBizU.com.
Members also get:
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the audio recording of the call
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transcript at no extra charge
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VIP access to the ENTIRE database of past expert calls
-
300+ templates, ebooks, worksheets, and how-to articles on all facets of marketing your business (and getting more clients) by using online marketing strategies)
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access to the member discussion forum where you can get all of your questions answered about how to best get found online
Not a member yet? Then join OnlineBizU.com today so you can take advantage of this call and ALL the other member benefits each and every month. All this for as little as 55 cents per day!
Renewing members join here.
Can’t make the call live? OnlineBizU.com members will have access to the recording, too.
I hope to “see” you Tuesday!
How to Become an Expert: 10 Key Questions to Ask to Unlock Your Expertise
Many business owners wrestle with this notion of “expertise”, feeling certain that they don’t know enough to be looked upon by anyone as an expert. I avoided that expert label as well for my first 5 or so years in business, despite being very good at what I did. I was always comparing myself to other “experts” in the field and felt myself falling sadly short on the experience meter of what I thought an expert should be.
As I reflect back on those early years, I now have to laugh at my lack of self-confidence. The only thing holding me back from declaring my expertise was me. Granted, I have run into a few nay-sayers over the years who have belittled my lack of experience in their industry and refused to talk with me further because of their skewed perceptions of my abilities. However, I’ve come to realize that many of those types of people are bogged down in their own fear, and it is easier for them to criticize others than to take any action to move themselves forward.
I also held myself back by filling my head with the “ought-tos” — someone else is doing this certain thing, and I “ought to” be doing it as well. Or, I was encouraged by well meaning friends that I “ought to” go in this direction instead. Or, I let myself become distracted by the BSOS (Bright Shiny Object Syndrome) and head in a direction that I would later end up regretting.
I wish I’d had someone early who could have really helped me determine my expertise in my particular industry. After many wrong turns and hitting alot of dead ends, I’ve devised this list of questions to help you determine your expertise and help you stand out from your peers.
1. What comes easily to you? I always viewed the stuff that came easily to me as stuff that everyone knew and was good at. I made the mistake many people make — because it comes easily to me, it must be that easy for everyone. What comes easily to you, may, indeed come easily to others, but by and large that’s not the case. Don’t dismiss all the skills, talents, and abilities you have that seem to be innate — they are a vital key in excavating your expertise.
2. What are you good at doing? Look at your skill set and how you spend your time. What kinds of tasks, activities and experience are you good at doing? Make a list of those for this discovery process.
3. For what reasons do people ask for your help? Over the years, people have sought you out for your help and experience in certain areas. Why did they come to you? What did you offer to them? What benefit did they gain by getting your help? What results did your assistance help them achieve?
4, What have you achieved based on what you know? Don’t overlook any of your experiences, as they may provide valuable clues to help you in this journey. Your achievements could include awards or accolades that you’ve won, or could simply be accomplishments that you’ve achieved for yourself, your business, your life, or for your clients.
5. What are you naturally drawn to learn? You’ve been learning all of your life, and some subjects are naturally more appealing to you. Some are so appealing that you learn about them just because you want to — there’s no other
reward or economic payoff for you. What kinds of information do you soak up like a sponge?
6. What parts of your past work/volunteer experiences have been most enjoyable? We’ve all held jobs that we loved and others that we regret ever taking. What parts of your work experiences or volunteer stints did you like the most? Did the enjoyment come in the tasks performed or from the people with whom you worked or the environment in which you worked?
7. What kinds of tasks do you complete in which time flies quickly? Have you found yourself doing something and before you know it several hours have passed? Those are the kinds of tasks to note in this question. When time passes effortlessly because you’re fully engaged, that’s a sure sign that you love whatever it is that you’re doing.
8. What have you spent lots of money and time on getting good at? Your employer or friends or spouse may force you to spend time learning things you don’t really want to learn as a condition of your employment or because your want to be a good friend or a supportive spouse. Aside from those, on what do you spend your time and money to learn more about?
9. What major obstacles have you overcome in your life? Sometimes stumbling blocks and obstacles and low points in our lives offer the greatest learning experiences. In my mid-30s I ripped apart my life and moved halfway across the country and started all over again as a single divorced woman with no job — I had only the dream of becoming self-employed. I glossed over that part of my life and didn’t share that story for several years because I was embarrassed about my failed marriage and ashamed of the fact that I had to move back in with my mother for a short while to get back on my feet again.
It took me a long time to realize that this experience of building a new virtual businesses from my small, rural East Texas hometown using only connections made online and Internet marketing strategies wasn’t simply a survival strategy — it was an example of how I could teach others to do the same. How can your obstacles serve as teaching moments for others?
10. What would you be doing if money were no object? If you were to win the lottery and then do the world tour with your new-found wealth, eventually you would return home and realize that you need to be doing something to fill the endless days. Shopping on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills like Paris Hilton is sure to grow old fast. So, how would you spend your time day-to-day?
Take Action Strategy
Your knowledge, likes and dislikes, and life experiences are all valuable keys to help you unlock your expertise. Learn to value these experiences and realize that there are others who desperately need what you know and will benefit from
this expertise.
If you need some help in unlocking your expertise or with your online marketing, schedule a FastTrack2Clients 50-minute session with me.
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE?
You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Internet Marketing Coach Donna Gunter helps professional service businesses stop the client chase and create online businesses that drive clients to them. Want to learn specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your online visibility in this free ebook, Turbocharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at ==> http://www.TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com
Helping You Get It Together with Dooster
I’m pretty fickle — I routinely fall in love and then quickly out of love with task management and project management services. Something always goes wrong in the relationship. However, I think I’ve finally found the perfect blend of simplicity, ease of use, and pricing that might keep me in love with my new task management service for a long time..:)
Dooster is an online project management, task collaboration and business administration tool designed to save you and your business from being overwhelmed by your tasks, appointments and emails while keeping important data, like contacts, schedules, emails and documents always close to hand and under one roof.
Dooster is simple to use. No training is required. Within seconds of signing up you can quickly create tasks, notes and events; then set priority levels, due dates and assign them to people, all with automated reminders. Dooster is also packed with short and simple how-to videos to help you each step of the way.
Here are some of my favorite features:
- Ability to create recurring tasks
- Assign a task to one or more people
- “Involve” people – e.g. clients – to watch its progress
- Get emailed alerts of all comments and changes
- All comments and any replies are centralized in the task.
- Changes and comments are emailed automatically to all involved
- Get all your files in one central safe location
- Easily upgrade / downgrade each users permissions
- Use the timer to track time devoted to a task/project
- Import / share your Google Contacts, Files and Calendar events and synch with your Google calendar
Best of all, they’ve just updated the look of the dashboard to give you a wonderful, bird’s-eye view of everything going on in your business, including overdue tasks, recent messages and what’s next. You can try it out free of charge (no credit card required), and then upgrade to a paid plan, if you need more than 3 projects.
Twitter Marketing: 6 Steps to Creating a Viral Marketing Campaign with Twitter Hashtags
Twitter, as a popular social networking platform, is a viral marketing strategy all on its own, especially if your followers like your tweets and retweet them to their followers. However, I’ve recently noticed another trend in Twitter usage that increases its viral marketing capabilities through the use of hashtags.
What’s a hashtag, anyway? Also called the pound sign, the hashtag (#) is added to a tweet as a way of creating trackable categories, groups, or topics that others can use to search for info using the Twitter Search feature. One of the most common uses of the hashtag is to tweet what’s happening at an event or conference. The event organizer will request all attendees use a specific hashtag, i.e. #yourevent, when tweeting about the event to your followers. So, then, someone who isn’t present at the event but wants to follow what’s happening there can simply search for #yourevent and see what’s going on and what participants are saying and sharing about the event.
Anyone can create a hashtag by putting hashtag (#) in front of anything. If you log into Twitter and look in the right-hand column, you’ll see the Trending Topics, many of which can be tracked with a hashtag. How can you use this strategy to create more viral marketing for your business on Twitter? By creating a hashtag Twitter tips campaign.
Here are 6 steps to help you create your own Twitter hashtag campaign:
1. Research. What kinds of tips would be appreciated by your target market? On what topics do you frequently receive questions from your clients? My target market is always asking questions about getting more traffic, so I decided to focus on traffic generation strategies.
2. Choose your name. Choose a short, simple name that reflects your brand and what you’re offering. Before making your final decision, you need to check your proposed name on Twitter Search (search by including the #) to ensure that no one else is using that name. Otherwise, your tweeted tips will intermingle with the other hashtag group using that name. I quickly checked and discovered that no one was using #OBUTrafficTip, so that’s what I chose.
3. Create your tips. You can easily pick your tips out of an article or blog post you’ve created. In my case, I had purchased a PLR ebook that I used as a basis for my tips. Remember that your tips need to be less than 140 characters, including the hashtag name you’ve chosen and any links you include.
4. Link to relevant info. You get the most mileage out of these tips if you link the tips to something relevant to that tip. For example, if you have a bank of articles, each tip might link to an article you’ve written that has more details about the tip. For maximum exposure, you’ll want to link to info on your site or your blog rather than to the posting of an article in an article directory.
5. Upload the tips into Hootsuite.com. This type of campaign is easily managed using Hootsuite.com. Simply upload your completed tips and set them to distribute once a day or (several times a week) over the upcoming weeks by postdating them into the future. In this way you put these tips on autopilot and they post themselves.
6. Let them begin to work their magic. It may take awhile for them to catch on, but eventually others will begin to retweet your tips as useful information they want their followers to access. As with most marketing strategies, consistence is the key here to your success.
It’s pretty easy to begin your own viral marketing tips campaign using the Twitter hashtag. Simply follow the steps as outlined above, and watch as your number of Twitter follows grows each day!
You’re welcome to use this article on your web site, blog or in your ezine if you include this blurb in its entirety, without modification:
Discover how to stop the client chase and create an online service business drives traffic to your web site with free instant access to 7 proven internet marketing strategies that separate the top 1% of online businesses from the rest by visiting http://www.TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com
Marketing in Facebook: 5 Secrets to Using Facebook Insights to Grow Your Fan Base
Facebook has its own internal metrics program called Facebook Insights for Facebook pages.
Insights lets page administrators improve their business pages by providing statistics on user growth, demographics, and creation and consumption of content. To view the metrics on your Facebook page, you must be a page administrator. To see the metrics, go to the Insights Dashboard on the Admin panel of your Facebook page.
Through the use of Facebook Insights, you can greatly improve the way you manage your Facebook business page.
Here are five ways you can use Facebook Insights to grow your fan base:
1. Understand the metrics. When you view your Insights statistics, you see a variety of metrics that gives you insight into how your fans as well as other Facebook users are interacting and reacting to your page. To access Insights features, click on the Insights link, found in the lower center section of your Admin panel. If you click the “See All” link, you’ll see your full Insights dashboard.
2. Dashboard metrics. In your dashboard, you’ll see four metrics at the top of your Insights tab that permit you to quickly understand the size and engagement of your audience. You should monitor these metrics closely to assess the success of your Facebook marketing strategy. You can view this data through your dashboard, or export the data.
You’ll see that some of your posts are more effective than others; some posts attract more attention that results in new fans, while others may cause fans to unlike your page. Consequently, you need to know which posts are inspiring what kind of action. You can see exactly how people are responding/reacting to your posts in the main dashboard area.
- Total Likes reflect the number of unique people who like your page.
- Friends of Fans show the number of unique people who are friends with your fans, including current fans.
- People Talking About This are the number of unique people who have created a story about your page in the last seven days.
- Weekly Total Reach is the number of unique people who have seen any content associated with your page (including any ads or sponsored stories pointing to your page) in the last seven days.
Two of these metrics – Total Likes and People Talking About This – are visible to anyone visiting your page, so in a glance that can understand how popular, active and engaging your page is.
3. Date and time. This metric tells you when your posts are reaching the most people “live,” and thus getting some fan page interactions. By tailoring your post times to your busiest interaction times, you can be sure to get your fresh posts in front of the most people possible. Note that the times noted are in U.S. Pacific time.
4. Demographics. When you know who your target market is, you can customize your posts to them and win even more fans like them over to your fan page. The demographics metric shows you the exact demographics of the people who like your page, including gender, age, location, cities, languages, and like sources. You can see similar demographics on your Reach as well as Talking About This.
5. External referrers. Located in your Reach tab, this metric shows you where your fans are coming from via a URL that is outside of Facebook. Knowing how your fans are finding you is a great way to identify areas of your Internet marketing that might need some work.
More and more businesses are using Facebook fan pages as a marketing tool with great results. Now that you are using Facebook’s fan page feature to your advantage, study your Facebook Insights to fine tune your fan page accordingly so that you attract more fans and more interaction on your Facebook page.
You can discover more info on how to use Facebook Insights with an ebook published by Facebook, Facebook Insights Guide.
bitly
Once upon a time I had a great piece of software that would let me create and track personalized links, like affiliate links, from my web site. However, my web host shut down my site and had me remove all traces of the software from it because there was bug in it that was doing strange things to their servers. So, until recently, I didn’t have a replacement for this.
bitly helps you collect, organize, shorten and share links. All links shared via bitly allow users to view complete, real-time traffic and analytics data. Why would you want to track your links? It’s helpful to see which links readers are clicking on and what’s working. Plus, the short links are much more manageable when you send out plain text emails.
Now, you can use bitly to create custom links using your own domain. The custom Short domain is the domain that takes the place of “bit.ly” in a shortened URL. If you were to use “myname.me” as a custom domain, instead of appearing like this:
bitly.com/bOm096G
your links would appear like this:
myname.me/bOm096G
A custom short domain is a great way to brand your content across the web, and it makes readers less hesitant to click the link if it’s something they recognize. For example, the New York Times uses “nyti.ms” as a custom short domain, and TechCrunch uses “tcrn.ch” My custom short domain is donnarecos.com.
To do this, simply buy a domain expressly for the purpose of creating links, and then change the DNS A Record and point it to bitly. (Full instructions are here). Tell bitly your domain name, and then you can begin creating and tracking links.
Start analyzing your links here.
