the secret of how to view your competition's social media analytics

in this episode, ciaran and daniel discuss how they use url shortening and eventually…reveal an interesting technique which enables you to view the analytics on any published bit.ly shortened url link. since recording this episode, we have also discovered that the same technique can be used to see results on goo.gl shortened links as well.

we were both a bit shocked that we could make 10 minutes of content from such a short and easy to implement technique….( but if you want to quickly get to the top jump to around 8.24 in the recording.) but it seemed a worthwhile opportunity to explore what can be done with url shortening services.

bit.ly link to this page which we used to promote this episode below if you want to test out the technique

http://bit.ly/ld3owu

just add the magic character to it and paste it into your web browser address bar.

interestingly you can choose to make bitlinks private in bit.ly by using the lock icon next to your bitlink, but as far as we can see this still doesn’t hide the public analytics. it just hides the bitlink from your social networks should you have linked your bitly accounts to those networks. making bitlinks private does, however, hide any notes you have added to them, so if you want to make your bitly account a little more private go to settings and set private as your default setting for your account.

we hope you enjoy this, and as always we would love your feedback. we are running a poll on our facebook page it you want to take part and share your views.

download episode 67