Archive for April, 2009
The Right Way? [Webcomic Wednesday]
Posted by Patrick Patterson in Comics on April 22, 2009
This week’s web comic is more of a life question… How could you possibly get lost traveling in a straight line? Now, you can feel free to take this literally and answer in various ways, but the straight line I am talking about is Point A to Point B in your life.
Since I was a kid, I have been taught that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. How many times have you been traveling a straight line to Point B only to find out either you missed life along the way or Point B isn’t really what you thought it was.
Often times the joy is in the journey. You can’t wait until your career takes off, you get that promotion, or whatever your Point B is, to enjoy life. So it’s really important to take everything, especially yourself, less seriously. Stop and smell the roses… and don’t get lost in the journey.
Using tr.im for Link Tracking (aka Track Those Tweets!)
Posted by Patrick Patterson in General on April 20, 2009
“
Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.” — Danny Kaye
In the world of analytics, this is very true. At the end of the day, you want to throw as much paint (tracking) on whatever you can. And in this world of microblogging and link sharing, tracking how many people click on your links is becoming more and more important. While there are countless (well, I’m sure we could count them) ways to track links like campaign codes and the like, I want to focus on using tr.im’s service exclusively.
tr.im is a URL shortening service that packs a strong analytics punch. Much like other shortening services like tinyurl or bit.ly, tr.im takes any long URL and spits you back a much much shorter version. In fact, it will take any URL and shorten it to just 17 characters. Wow!
Here is where you say, “Ok ok ok, we are already using a shortening service, why should I use trim?” Well, on top of the truncation of URLs, tr.im offers stats for each link that you shorten.
And this tracking is present automatically for each URL that you shorten. No manipulating the URL, no setting redirects, no fuse… just tracking. Oh yeah, link it up with your twitter account and it will automattically tweet the URL with a message for you. That’s what I like. Trust me, you’ll like it too.
Tr.im tracks your tr.im URL’s visits: when they happened, the visitor’s location, the refering website, and, simply, the number of clicks that it got. With tr.im statistics, you know a link’s popularity.
On top of the extremely easy to use web interface, tr.im also offers:
Here are some screenshots to whet your appetite:
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