Bitly is an online marketing tool for link management and analytics

10-second breakdown:

Bitly is an online marketing tool that not only shortens URLs, but also helps to drive performance and even increase app installs. Recommended for companies, social media specialists, and creators looking to improve their branding campaigns and monitor link analytics.

Bitly is used in small (0-50 employees), medium (51-1,000 employees) and enterprise companies (1,000+ employees).

The good:

Bitly offers a lot of free resources available to small brands and creators that are trying to learn more about where they should utilize their marketing efforts.

Seeing where and when links are being clicked as well as understanding percentages of clicks by country is also helpful when it comes to planning content.

It’s also easy to use the site just as a general link shortener. If you don’t want or need all of the extra features, they aren’t been shoved down your throat.

The bad:

Having a tour for the free version that shares all of the benefits and some ‘suggested use cases’ would really help first-time Bitly users.

How it works:

Getting started with Bitly is easy. All you need to do is sign up using social sign-ons (like Twitter or Facebook) and then you can start creating links and tracking analytics right away. If you’d rather not attach a social account, you can also sign up manually by creating a username and password.

When you sign into Bitly you are brought to a dashboard that shows your recently shortened links, along with a graph sharing the basics of how your recent link is doing.

Some of the analytic features shown on the dashboard include total clicks (all time, during the last hour, and the last 24 hours), total clicks from this link, clicks from a different bitlink that direct to the same page, along with where they bitlink was shared (like on Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

You also have the option of archiving a link, editing the link, tagging it (handy for finding it later), and some simple share options you can do without even leaving the page.

On the left side of your dashboard you can check out a stats area that shows you clicks over all of your links, as well as a “your network” page that functions similarly to a Twitter news feed. On the network page you can see who else in your social network is using bitly (automatically generated from your linked accounts) and get a preview of all of their links on this page.

On one example network, the blogger Pretty Shiny Sparkly has taken advantage of Bitly’s option to use her own short url. Instead of her links starting off as bit.ly, she has purchased the right to use sprk.li (meaning sparkly). This is exactly what Bitly wants creators and brands to do, create a link system that connects to your brand name or image and thus increases engagement.

Bitly is working hard to position themselves as a marketing tool so they have also created a resources corner that has many free guides that can be used alongside their website.

To get these free resources, you just need to enter your email address. Their blog also shares weekly content helpful for those trying to get the best uses out of this site.

Bitly has a premium service called Brand Tools for larger brands aimed to help them “own, understand and activate” audiences. A few details on these exclusive features are shown like the ability to segment an audience by device, set goals, and additional engagement analytics.

Verizon, BuzzFeed, eBay, and Keurig are some of the brands advertised to be using these premium features.

Overall, this is a great free service that I can see myself utilizing a lot more than I would have a few years ago. There are clear improvements in the design of the site and the suggested implementation of the product.

If you are willing to spring for a short URL, it can also be a great branding tool along with the analytics features.

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