Shruti LeleOne of the most common woes for anyone with a business is “lack of traffic” to their website or blog. In today’s hyper digital age, it is almost suicidal if a business does not have a good online presence.
Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet for getting tons of traffic to your website!
But generating solid traffic to your website is easier said than done. It takes a laser focused, consistent and strategic approach and often people fall off the wagon too early.
However, there are tools that you could add to your content marketing arsenal that can send some much needed targeted traffic back to your website. Today I am going to discuss one such tool: Snip.ly.
What exactly is Snip.ly?
Snip.ly is a powerful new tool that allows you to use content curation to drive targeted traffic to your website.
No it is nothing like bit.ly. Sure, they are both link shorterners but Snip.ly is a much more powerful tool.
Let me explain why…
Let’s face it, we all spend way too much time on the Internet reading and sharing articles, right? Imagine if we could use some of those shares to drive some traffic back to our own websites/blogs. Sound great? Well that is exactly what Snip.ly does.
Snip.ly is essentially a tool that you could use to share an awesome piece of content written by an influencer in your industry and use it to drive a wave of targeted traffic to your site. So every time you share any article (technical or otherwise) on any social network, instead of sharing the original link you share the Snip.ly link, which allows the destination page to have a call to action at the bottom of the page, directing the reader to a desired landing page on your own website.
Step-By-Step Guide to Start Using Snip.ly
Here is how you can start using Snip.ly:
- Sign up for a free account:
Head over to Snip.ly and sign up for a free account.
- Find a piece of content you want to share on your social media sites:
It is recommended to share an article that is related to your blog/business, but it isn’t mandatory. This way the readers who land on the original article’s page are likely audiences for your website too, increasing the chances of conversion. Lets say you work in the mobile space and want to share this article: “5 creative best practices to double mobile ad revenue” by Clickz.
- Copy the URL of this article into Snip.ly:
Paste the URL of this article into the Snip.ly bar on the homepage of the website. You could also paste it in the dashboard once you log in.
- Click the “snip” button and customize the box that pops up:
This is where the magic happens. This box is basically where you can customize the CTA that pops up at the bottom of the original article being shared. Here you should put the title and URL of your own landing page you want the reader to go to. For e.g.: If you want the reader of the ClickZ article to land on a similar blog post you wrote then here is how the customization would look like:
- Click “create” and copy the custom snip.ly URL:
Congratulations, you have created your first snip! You can now share this link on any of the social media sites you wish.
- Share the Snip.ly link:
Copy the snipped link and go to your chosen social media website(s) and share the snip.ly link instead of the original Clickz link with suitable text:
- On Twitter it is good to include the twitter handle of the original author or website. It doesn’t hurt to leverage their audiences and in the process we give them due credit.Here is how the original Clickz page would look to someone who clicks on it. Notice the customized CTA at the bottom of the page, which links back to the Personagraph blog:
Bonus tip: If you install the snip.ly chrome extension, it makes snipping that much more easy. Every time you visit an interesting page, you can “snip” it right from your browser’s toolbar and post it directly to Twitter and other social media pages.
Pricing: Snip.ly is very robustly priced, starting from a basic free account all the way to the “Business” account priced at $ 125/month. The basic free account gives you access to the analytics and around 1000 clicks/month. The paid versions of the account gives you more control over customization of the buttons, logos and the overall look and feel of the “snip”. It is recommended to start with the free version to get a sense of what this tool could do for you or your business and then upgrade depending on your budget.
Snip.ly Analytics:
All Snip.ly accounts come with a neat analytics dashboard. The dashboard gives you some good data like: Number of snips created, number of clicks generated, average time on the page etc. The dashboard looks something like this:
The snip.ly dashboard has all the data you need to know to identify what “snips” worked and what didn’t. It is a convenient place to manage all your snips in one place and monitor how much traffic your snips are generating.
Conclusion:
Overall, Snip.ly is a great tool that, if used correctly, can drive a ton of traffic to your website and generate leads. It is simple, easy to use and more importantly a very cost effective way to drive traffic to your website or blog.
That’s it. Easy peasy!
Have you used Snip.ly yet? I would love to hear about your experience!
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