5 Things to Look for in Your Bitly Stats

Mid-year I created a Twitter account (@SerenaHsiOS, ~700 followers) to push out elearning links since it didn't seem like the right venue to push them out my food-themed Twitter account (@nwfood). There are two stats from the Bitly dashboard that I find most curious. The first is the country domain referrer and the second is how users find my tweet--and only 15% them find it through Twitter.

Like most people, I just use Bitly as a link shortener. I know it has link stats and that once you create a bitlink, it can never be deleted (maybe archived these days). And with a mobile device and social sharing permissions, I can use Bitly to push out links to either Twitter account through Bitly with no extra logins required. I can even format the layout of the tweet.

This to me is very strange, considering that I only broadcast business and elearning story links through non-food Twitter account. Let's tackle country referrer first. Here is the last 30-ish days from my Bitly dashboard:

2015-12 Last 30 Days - Bitlinks on @SerenaHsiOS - Country Domain

What in the world?? Why is engagement so high from Germany if my primary follower audience is US-based? I have no answer for this just yet.

The next dashboard shows me how a user got to my feed:

2015-12 Last 30 Days - Bitlinks on @SerenaHsiOS - Refer Type

Even more puzzling is the grouping for the first bucket. What makes me concerned about the validity of this data is that when I look at the list for my top tweets, according to the Bitly dashboard, no tweet has received more than 5 likes. And, on top of that.. how do you suppose impressions are calculated? I would have expected the top two stats to be reversed. How are my tweets being picked up if not through Twitter itself?

2015-12 Twitter Dashboard @SerenaHsiOS

Between Bitly and Twitter, my social analytics dashboards make no sense -- because my followers/following is so small (fewer than 1k each).

Klout and Unnatural Ranking

Klout started a while ago as a reputation ranking tool for users (and corporations) of social media. I only have one social property tied to Klout and as such, my Klout score is pitifully anemic (holding steady at 41, for just signing up and doing nothing much at all). I started looking at the scores of public figures and companies and then it dawned onto me that these entities have teams and a multitude of people contributing to and managing this score. Which really seems vastly unfair to those of us who represent small businesses. Sure, there might be a tinge of anger in this post; but I assure you it's for good reason.

Klout does nothing for my business. It doesn't help me generate leads or create new business opportunities; nor does it do anything for my clients who share the same online space on social media platforms. Klout doesn't even help a business gauge how well they are liked by customers who have purchased products or used their services. It's a useless "reputation" score that's generated by how frequent you post to your social network across multiple social networks. Seriously, neither I nor my followers and readers need that level of spam in our lives.

What bothers me is the inconsistency of how scores are calculated. It begs the question of today's random sceenshot:

How many tags does it take to get the phrase "Being a Mom" associated with Microsoft's Klout score? That's what I want to know.

About.Me - Push My Buttons

The only time I hit the about.me website is when I see it featured on a new acquaintance's LinkedIn profile or business card. While I get an occasional product update email from about.me, I hardly take the time to look at it in detail. What gets me tickled is that my profile (about.me/mktgurl) has gotten 1,190 profile views. This is significantly more than what I get on LinkedIn where I actively manage the profile. How people find me is a mystery. I don't advertise this profile url much. It's tied to Google+ and Facebook. Other than that, I don't expect social engagers from either social platform to refer traffic to about.me.

What about.me does is the same as Vizify, a non-portfolio-centric view of yourself. I suppose you could go route, but why bother when other comparable alternatives exist with far better tools and frills.

The connectivity content push has never been easier than now for end-users of these services.

About.me: easy steps to add links to a profile

About.me has simplified the act of typing with its quick button-oriented profile add-ons. Does it work for you?