The Twitter Book

Use URL shorteners to track click-throughs

Using Twitter to help drive traffic to your sites? Measuring that traffic is a smart thing to do. If you have Google Analytics or a similar measuring package, you're all set. But if you don't have access to those tools or the wherewithal to get them set up, a URL shortener that tracks click-throughs is a quick and dirty way to gauge traffic.

Among the services that track: Bit.ly (http://bit.ly); Tr.im (http://tr.im); and Cli.gs (http://cli.gs). (They all let you create custom short URLs, too.)

Tracking through URL shorteners is an imperfect system because some people will change the original URL when they retweet you. Still, using a shortener can give you a sense of the traffic you're gaining from Twitter. For an extra measure of measurement, try TweetReach (http://tweetreach.com), which shows how many people may have seen a post.

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For a mind-blowingly thorough discussion and review of URL shorteners, see Danny Sullivan's (@dannysullivan) article, "URL Shorteners: Which Shortening Service Should You Use?" (http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-shouldyou-use-17204).