Media training 101 for small businesses

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Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr
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Get more ROI out of your URL shorteners with these 4 workflows

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URL shorteners are underrated.

Many people use them to do exactly what the term says: shorten URLs. These links are cleaner and smaller and make for easier sharing and clicking. Bitly research shows that when you shorten and brand URLs, they drive 34 percent more click-throughs.

But that’s only the start.

With Zapier, you can connect your URL shorteners to a host of other tools. You can automatically create new shortened links every time you publish content, track shortened links in a spreadsheet, easily monitor who interacts with your links, and more.

You'll need a Zapier account to use the workflows in this piece. If you don't have an account yet, it's free to get started. And if these workflows don't meet your needs, you can explore more in our App Directory or within the Zap Editor.

Automatically create shortened URLs

Once you start using a URL shortener, it’s hard to go back. Those long URLs start to look ugly and cumbersome. But it’s tempting to simply copy and paste a long URL, especially if you have a large batch of links that need to be shortened.

You don’t have to manually create those short links, though. With Zapier, you can automatically create shortened URLs every time you create content, add new products to your site, or add rows to relevant spreadsheets.

Zapier has its own URL Shortener app. You can add it as a step in your Zap, automatically shortening a URL. Learn more about URL Shortener by Zapier.

Creating short links for your content

When you create new posts in your content management system (CMS) or send out a new newsletter, use a Zap to automatically shorten the published link for you.

Shortened URLs are also helpful for curated content. If you follow RSS feeds to share information on your website, you can automatically create shortened to make the process less time- and labor-intensive.

Use short URLs in your online store

Shortened URLs also help closer to the point of conversion. With Zaps, you can automatically create short links each time you add new products, update orders, or take payments.

Automatically shorten links you store in a spreadsheet

And if you work in spreadsheets, you can automatically shorten URLs as you add them to a Google Sheet or make updates to existing data.

Keep track of your links

The more you use your URL shortener tools, the more URLs you’re going to have to track. That can become unwieldy, especially as your list of shortened URLs grows.

You don’t want to waste time creating multiple short links for a destination URL that already has a short link. And it’s time-consuming to constantly check your URL shortener to see whether you’ve already created a link. But with Zaps, it’s easy to keep track of all your new links.

Automatically track new links in a spreadsheet to sort and find duplicates.

When new links are created, notify your team so they can pull from an existing one instead of duplicating work.

Monitor link activity

Link shorteners don’t just give you shorter links; they give you better ones. You can use tools like Bitly and Rebrandly to track who interacts with your links. Use these Zaps to leverage that data.

Automatically monitor link activity for performance and engagement over time, and set up notifications to alert the team whenever a link hits a certain goal.

Share shortened URLs on social media

Social media presents one of the best use cases for shortened URLs, especially given length restrictions on posts. With short links, you can preserve character counts on social posts. Plus, you can brand shortened URLs so they’re recognizable when other social media profiles share your links.

Automatically share shortened URLs to your own social accounts.

Use these Zaps to automatically add shortened URLs to your social media automation tools and schedule posts for a future date.

Go beyond the basic benefits of URL shorteners

The advantages of URL shorteners are greater than just shorter URLs.

When you shorten your URLs with one of these apps, you’ll drive higher click-through rates and have more data to better inform your strategies. And once you connect these apps via Zapier, you get even more done with less effort — all thanks to automation.

Get more value for the work you put in: when you shorten your URLs, you also shorten your to-do list.



from The Zapier Blog https://ift.tt/3gXiCw1

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