Bitly-Ebook-37-Ways-Brands-Use-Bitly-Final

INTRODUCTION 2
HOW BRANDS USE BITLY FOR...
Social Media 3
Branding 11
Metrics 18
Mobile 25
Content 29
CONCLUSION
The Power of the Link, Evolved 34
TABLE OF CONTENTS
37 WAYS BRANDS USE BITLY 1
37 WAYS
BRANDS
USE BITLY

You may or may not be a Bitly user already. Millions of people use our link man-
agement platform to shorten links every day and keep track of how those links
get shared. Recently, though, we wanted to see how Bitly was being used in in
the wild. How does a print magazine use Bitly? How about a tech startup? Or an
author or a consultant?
In this eBook, you’ll learn all of that and more, which will hopefully inspire you
to try new things with Bitly that will help your business grow, whether you’re an
enterprise, a small shop, or an artist.
IN THIS EBOOK, YOU WILL LEARN:
• How brands of all different shapes and sizes are using Bitly in their marketing
• Five different channels where Bitly can help with metrics & optimization
• 37 different examples, quotes, and use cases to make the most of Bitly
37 WAYS
BRANDS
USE BITLY

HOW TO
REGAIN
CONTROL OF
your BRAND
“In the real world, you don’t have infinite resources; you
don’t have a perfect product; you don’t sell to a growing mar-
ket without competition. You’re also not omnipotent, so you
cannot enforce what your. Under these assumptions, most
companies need all the help they can get with branding”
GUY KAWASAKI
USING BITLY for
SOCIAL MEDIA
Bitly’s roots are in social media, so it’s no surprise that users are
constantly thinking of new ways to use the tool across every social
channel. Businesses rely on Bitly to help track and measure which
channels are most effective. They also use Bitlinks to track the
performance of paid social promotions and landing pages.
Here’s how brands can use Bitly for social media marketing:

USING BITLY for SOCIAL MEDIA
To see how content performs across different channels, brands like ESPN and
Wealthfront use Bitly to track the engagement on different social posts. That
makes it easy to see which channels are seeing the most clicks and where the
content sees the most shares.
TRACKING ENGAGEMENT FROM
POSTS TO CONTENT
1

Some companies integrate Bitly directly within their social shares buttons.
That ensures that whenever content is shared through those buttons, the
engagement is measured beyond that share. By doing that, MTV, for example,
can ensure that the links—and all the engagement metrics—stay within the
branded URL.
TRACKING ENGAGEMENT BEYOND
THE SHARE BUTTON
2

Brands like Spotify use Bitly to make sure that every link is branded with the
Spotify domain. Not only that, clicking this tweet on mobile will deep link
directly to the app, getting users right to the playlist itself. That encourages
app engagement and installation in addition to providing a better, less
frustrating customer experience.
SHARING
AND TRACKING MEDIA
3

UNITING CHANNELS & SUBSIDARIES
“I’ve been using Bitly for Mcgregor & Thompson and its subsidiaries, to track
the social reach of links we post.
Since I control the social and web presences of four subsidiaries under
one parent company, Bitly is a great way to track where clicks to the same
link come from when it is posted in different places or under different
subsidiaries.”
ISAAC K. OOMMEN
INTERNET MARKETING MANAGER
MCGREGOR & THOMPSON
@MANDTHARDWARE
4

A lot of consumer and media brands are making big pushes on Instagram. But
how do you know that you’re driving people back to your website? Mashable
uses Bitly to keep track of visitors who come from Instagram. That way, they
know whether their Instagram audience is engaging with other channels.
TRACKING
INSTAGRAM METRICS
5

With Instagram’s new “Buy” buttons, Instagram has provided brands the ability
to advertise on its platform. Twitter has also been experimenting with “Buy
Now” options. Brands can incorporate Bitlinks in these buttons to track the
users that have clicked, which channels provide the most ROI, and how the
links are shared.
“BUY” BUTTONS
ON SOCIAL
6

If you’re promoting a product on social, you can use Bitlinks to track how
those promotions are working. While Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all offer
analytics tools, it’s helpful to centralize those stats and visualize how well each
paid social campaign is working from one central dashboard.
PAID
SOCIAL CAMPAIGNS
7

“Bitly is critical and a must-use tool for all startups, entrepreneurs and
business owners.
Those who don’t measure don’t grow in business and Bitly allows you the
opportunity to effectively test different copy to see what gets more clicks
and what is a complete dud.
We use Bitly regularly to test different CTAs (call to action) to see what
is driving us traffic and what isn’t. We constantly use it to test
different copy when we post a new blog post. We’ll send out 3-4 Tweets the
day a post goes live to see what gets the most clicks. We review that data
the next day and take the most clicked Tweet and put it in a bucket of
Tweets that get Tweeted consistently.
This data helps us maximize our Twitter marketing and has helped our
startup get over 25,000 visitors a month just from Twitter.”
MIKE KAWULA
CEO, SOCIAL QUANT
@THESOCIALQUANT
OPTIMIZING YOUR CTAS
8

A lot of businesses run contests across social channels to engage their
audiences and drive promotions. To keep track of which channels are driving
engagement, you can use Bitlinks. These are especially helpful if you want
to track the momentum around different contests, and who’s sharing and
referring traffic to the landing page.
MEASURING ENGAGEMENT
FROM CONTESTS
9

In addition to using Bitlinks to track engagement across paid social promotions
and optimizing CTAs, SocialQuant uses Bitly to see how many visitors are
coming from their Twitter account and clicking on a “Free Trial” link in the
company bio.
MEASURING PRODUCT TRIALS
FROM TWITTER
10

USING BITLY
for BRANDING
In a world where every impression counts and consumer attention is
fleeting, brand is more important than ever. A lot of businesses use
Bitly to customize links to reflect products, campaigns, and special
offers. Others leverage Bitly’s Branded Short Domains to ensure that
web properties and social networks stay consistent.
Here’s how companies are using Bitly to help build brand awareness:

USING BITLY for BRANDING
It’s hard not to think of Nike when you see a swoosh or think of Redbull when
you think of wings. To keep pushing those powerful brand elements, both
businesses use Branded Short Domains. All of Nike’s links are branded with
swoo.sh, while Redbull’s links are all defined by the win.gs domain.
This can make a big difference—Branded Short Domains can see up to 34%
higher click-through rates than unbranded links.
BRANDING
ACROSS CHANNELS
11

Branded Short Domains also keep sharing and engagement metrics under one
roof. Even if someone visits content directly and shares it on their own social
network, the link stays branded. That means that you can see not only how
the content you share is doing, you can see how your brand’s content is being
shared and clicked across the entire Bitly network.
MEASURING
THIRD-PARTY ENGAGEMENT & SHARES
12

“We use customized Bitly links in all “click-to-tweets” in our marketing
campaigns. For example, for our ecourse’s lesson pages and emails, whenever
we encourage the readers to tweet a quote from the current lesson, it’s with a
Bitly link. That way, we can customize the shortened link to reflect the campaign
(i.e. bit.ly/monitoring101), and we can easily see what kind of traffic those click-
to-tweets are driving.
BRITTANY BERGER
CONTENT & PR MANAGER, MENTION
@MENTION, @BBERG1010
BRANDED CLICK-TO-TWEETS
13

You can also customize Bitlinks to reflect specific offers. That can help drive
awareness of the product name, as well as increased engagement. Here,
VISSLA is promoting a bathing suit that’s made out of recycled materials with a
custom link.
CUSTOMIZED LINKS
TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS
14

“The Content Factory has been using (and advocating that our clients also
use) Bitly for years. We’ve even promoted the site in multiple “how-to”
webinars on social media marketing.
While the click stats make an impressive go-to analytic for monthly progress
reports, our favorite feature is the customize field. The combination of
reduced characters in the URL with the ability to incorporate brand-specific
words makes this feature a no-brainer any time we have an important social
media contest or article to promote.”
JASON MYERS
PR COORDINATOR & SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
THE CONTENT FACTORY @CONTENTFAC
BRANDED SOCIAL ASSETS
15

USING BITLY
for METRICS
One big advantage of using Bitly is that brands can track the engage-
ment across websites and other channels that they ordinarily wouldn’t
be able to access. Bitlinks can help show how much traffic is being di-
rected, activated, and promoted to your products or services from other
sites, email campaigns, syndicated articles, and more.
Here’s how companies are using Bitly to help measure marketing &
brand awareness initiatives.

USING BITLY for METRICS
2137 WAYS BRANDS USE BITLY
With Bitly’s dashboard, you can analyze the best time to publish content
by time of day or day of the week and then filter those statistics further by
categories like channel, location, and device type.
From there, brands are able to pinpoint when different content should be
posted to social networks, as well as the best times for marketing campaigns.
You can also analyze when your audiences are most active.
OPTIMIZE
YOUR TIMING
16

Bitly allows brands to see referring traffic to all Bitlinks from both the links
you’ve shared and the links to your content that are being shared by others.
That way, brands can see channels where users are interacting and sharing
content organically and allocate marketing spend depending on which channels
are most effective.
REFERRER
TRAFFIC
17

Dynamic Signal powers employee advocacy programs for the world’s
biggest brands. By enabling employees to find and share the latest brand
and industry content, we help employees build their personal brands while
creating a new, authentic marketing channel for the brand.
Via our integration with Bitly, content shared by employees can include a
Branded Short Domain, adding branding value to the share and letting the
brand add employee social media activity as a channel within their existing
analytics.
TOM CARR
SENIOR DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY
@DYNAMIC_SIGNAL
EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY + ANALYTICS
18

If you’re targeting certain markets, Bitly can help you make informed decisions
about where to spend your budget. With the dashboard’s geolocation data,
teams can analyze where content is resonating, especially if you’ve built Bitlinks
for targeted campaigns and multi-language websites.
ANALYZING
REGIONAL ENGAGEMENT
19

As an author, I use Bitly to help me assess which promotion sites are working for
me. I create tagged links with special syntax to distinguish the links. I then use
Bitly to shorten them and make sure I create an identifiable description of the
link within my control panel. With this method, I was able to see that a promotion
that cost me three dollars barely got me a link click while another free promotion
got me over 200 clicks. I now have enough information to decide how to not use
my money during a future book promotion.
I use also Bitly to shorten links to my book and I can see how the clicks build over
time. Within my social media managing software, I use Bitly to see how my social
media posts are working during my every day promotion. I do have some idea of
how links are performing on Twitter, Facebook and other sites but not necessarily
what part of the world the links are coming from, which is data I used to be able
to see but no longer.
There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not using Bitly for something. I find it
extremely useful in assessing progress during special book sales and in
general promotions.
PALESSA
AUTHOR
@AUTHORPALESSA
TRACK YOUR SALES ACROSS
THIRD-PARTY PROMOTIONS
20

Print ads have long been a blind spot in most marketing budgets. While you
may pay to display an advertisement in a magazine or catalog, do you know if
that’s actually driving return? Some businesses use Bitly to keep track. Here,
BarkBox used a Branded Short Domain on an ad to drive people back to the
website to learn more about the company’s donation program.
MEASURING
ROI FROM PRINT ADS
21
Fitness
Get pumped up, Barkbox pups!
This month when you Text-to-Reorder yourpup’s favorite goodies, you’ll also be helpinga pup in need! BarkGood will donate 10% ofall reorders to our Shelter of the Month - readmore at ruv.me/shelterofthemonth
Just text 484-696-2275 with the re-order codeson the back of this card to place your reorder.Any questions? Visit faq.barkbox.com!

Subways present another dilemma for digital marketers: they’re highly visible,
but there’s no Internet connection to see whether the audience is interacting
with the ad. National Grid worked around this problem by presenting a
Branded Short Domain and customized Bitlink. So when passengers do get
service, they can easily check out the website to learn more. Meanwhile, the
team at National Grid can see exactly how many people are following through
on the next steps with the subway ad.
MEASURING
ROI FROM SUBWAY ADS
22

“At Rose Brand, we use Bitly to create a link between our digital presence
and print campaigns. Our customers connect with our brand online as well
as off. Since our demographic is still very involved in traditional media, we
include Bitlinks in any print ads we run. By tracking clicks, we’ve been able to
see a clear connection before the campaigns we run offline and the actions
customers take online.
In addition to linking it with print ad campaigns, we also use Bitlinks
throughout our printed product catalogs. We’re able to easily redirect
customers to online resources, which will help them make better purchasing
decisions. Using tracked clicks along with Google Analytics data, we’ve been
able to better understand the customer journey as it moves from offline to
online, and the steps customers are taking that result in sales.”
ANNA KLIMCZUK
MARKETING COORDINATOR
ROSE BRAND @ROSEBRAND, @HEYANNAKAY
MEASURE ROI
FROM MAGAZINE ADS
23

By adding a “+” to the end of a Bitlink URL, a brand can access any Bitlink’s
statistics and check out the engagement, clicks, geographic distribution, and
more. This is handy if you’re trying to analyze which content is working for
other brands, as well as competitors.
ANALYZING
COMPETITOR ENGAGEMENT
24

“When we look to position a client as a thought leader relative to their
industry, part of the strategy includes linking to and voicing their reaction
to third-party content where we don’t necessarily have analytics or
comprehensive data like we have with our own content.
Bitly empowers us to gain an understanding on which content, and types
of content, a client’s social audience is interested in reading and engaging
with most often, regardless if it’s from a site the client owns or a third-party
content source. This is crucial in optimizing our content strategy so we can
make sure we’re discussing topics that are of most interest to the respective
social audience.”
DAVE NEUMAN
DIRECTOR, SOCIAL MEDIA SERVICES
PRIME VISIBILITY @DAVE0911
TRACKING ROI FROM
PUBLICATIONS
25

If your site allows users to build their own web assets or profiles, you can use
Bitlinks to keep track of the engagement around those properties. Bitlinks
can also be used to monitor traction from partners or clients when they’re
promoting your products or services. You can offer custom Bitlinks to each
partner to help track how different campaigns, products, and audiences
interact with offers and content.
Here, Kickstarter is using Bitlinks to track clicks and measure interest differnet
projects.
MEASURING
PRODUCTS, PARTNERS & PROFILES
26

USING BITLY
for MOBILE
When it comes to mobile marketing, tracking the results of different
campaigns can be difficult. Which devices are the most popular?
How do different mobile campaigns perform and where are custom-
ers visiting within the app? By combining Bitlinks, deep links, and
apps, companies can start making progress in optimizing their mobile
marketing campaigns.

USING BITLY for MOBILE
Businesses that use SMS campaigns to get in touch with customers also have
a unique opportunity to use Bitlinks for shortening and branding the links for
text messages. Some brands also use Bitlinks for each campaign to measure
engagement, which devices were used to interact with the campaign, and
where it was most geographically relevant.
SMS CAMPAIGNS
27

“As a fashion app creator, we promote our app in many platforms: Facebook,
Twitter, Reddit, fashion blogs, etc. We have high interest in knowing which
platform is effective by tracking where traffic to our App Store app comes
from.
Before, we would have to set up a custom page and send the user to that
page to get the analytics, then redirect the user to the App Store. With
Bitly, this process is super easy, with no code needed. All I need is to setup a
Bitlink that points to my app in the App Storeand use that link on our social
channels instead of the App Store link.
We can track all traffic to our App Store app just by logging into Bitly and
viewing the analytics!”
HANAH NGUYEN
STUFF’N’STYLE
@FASHIONGIIK
APP PROMOTIONS
28

If your business has an app, you probably know that it isn’t just a challenge
to get users to install your app—it can be a challenge to retain them. When
you’re trying to build campaigns to promote app installs or re-engagement
campaigns, deep linking is key. A deep link directs users from a link into the
app or—if the app isn’t installed—to an interstitial ad encouraging app installs,
where it was most geographically relevant. Bitly can help track, measure, and
implement deep links for these campaigns.
APP INSTALLS AND RE-ENGAGEMENT
29

USING BITLY
for CONTENT
Content marketing has become a critical strategy for many businesses.
By building compelling content that gets your audience to visit your website
and interact with your brand, you can build customer relationships and
loyalty… not to mention business. But what content works the best to engage
customers and prospects? And how are people sharing it?
Here’s how brands can use Bitlinks to find out.

USING BITLY for CONTENT
If your marketing strategy depends on content, then you’re probably creating a
lot of eBooks and other gated content. But how many people are downloading
that collateral? And are they sharing it across different networks?
Bitly can help you track how web visitors and inbound leads are downloading
that collateral. You can even drill down into referrals, channels where the links
are most shared, and where the eBook links see the most engagement.
EBOOK DOWNLOADS
30

“I typically use Bitly to measure clickthroughs for gated content and CTAs
for purchases. For example, I have a buy now button on my author page for
my book which leads into Amazon, but it is sometimes difficult to track how
many click on the link. It is possible to use Google Analytics Events, but these
aren’t infallible.
You can publish the link elsewhere as well, and Bitly breaks down the source
of the click which means you can track outbound and inbound clicks from any
number of sources, which you can’t do with onsite analytics tools.”
ROBIN WAITE
HOSTPIPE
@HOSTPIPE
BUY BUTTONS
31

During a webinar or at a presentation, it can be hard to make sure that
attendees follow up afterwards. They can’t necessarily click any provided link,
but you can make a simple Bitlink to work around that. At Bitly, we use links
with customized calls-to-action to drive webinar attendees to the next step.
CTAS FOR WEBINARS & PRESENTATIONS
32

“For me, Bitly is a truly life-saving tool. I use it mainly to monitor the social
reach of our stories, and Bitly helps me out here greatly.
Seeing the number of clicks, what the referrers are, and where clicks come
from geographically enables me to analyze the efficiency of our content and
to tweak our activities accordingly.
I also like the ability to customize my Bitly links to make them descriptive and
tie them to our campaigns. It’s an awesome feature!”
ANTON BLOTSKIY
DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER, INFOPULSE
@ABLOTSKIY
CONTENT OPTIMIZATION
33

Larger businesses often have multiple blogs that serve different audiences.
When you’re sharing that content, you can customize the URL to include
custom keywords that help brand that content marketing channel.
Here, Apple developed a Bitlink specifically to drive people to a blog about
how runner Christy Burns trained for a marathon with the Apple Watch.
BRAND & TRACK INDIVIDUAL BLOGS
34

VISUALIZE & CENTRALIZE
CONTENT METRICS
“We use Bitly to complement the data that the social networks and Google
Analytics currently provide. It makes it easier for us to get a full
picture of the type of content that our users love or pass up.
By looking at both our most popular content and least popular content, we’re
able to constantly tweak our content strategy in real-time.”
CHRISTINE ROCHELLE
DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL MARKETING & OPERATIONS
@CLROCHELLE
35

If you’re a large chain or franchise, you know how hard it can be to get
individual reviews for each different location. Some companies work around
this by using customized Bitlinks to encourage customer participation. That
way, you know where the reviews are coming from—and whether they’re good
or bad.
TRACK CUSTOMER SURVEYS
36

“Bitly has been awesome not only for tracking social shares (we have it
integrated with Buffer), but also for tracking our secondary conversions,
which is sharing via Twitter.
For a user who signs up for our newsletter or pays to use UsersThink, the
‘thank you’ page they land on then asks that they tweet a prepared tweet on
our behalf, including a Bitlink. This lets us know how well each thank
you page is doing for getting people to tweet on our behalf.”
JOHN TURNER
CEO, USERSTHINK
@USERSTHINKAPP
TRACK LANDING PAGE
SOCIAL SHARES
37

We hope that this collection of Bitly use cases has inspired you to think about
new and exciting ways about how you can apply the power of the link to your
marketing. The real power of Bitly is that it’s as simple as it is versatile. As long
as you’re using Bitlinks in every campaign, you can start building out an analytics
dashboard that helps you monitor exactly how your audiences react to content,
products, or services.
As devices and channels continue to proliferate and marketers struggle to find
out where their resources are best spent, you can use the power of the link to
create analytics that can be used to optimize ominchannel marketing campaigns,
test out content and products, and see exactly what your customers want.
Special thanks to Data Science Intern Zach Schleien for helping this eBook come together.
THE POWER of THE LINK,
EVOLVED
CONCLUSION
INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT WHAT BITLY CAN
DO FOR YOUR BRAND?
Email us at brands@bitly.com to learn how.

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