Snip.ly – When sharing of links is not enough to drive engagement through social media

Sniply, or snip.ly, was the name of a company started by ex-Google and ex-Microsoft product managers and engineers back in 2010, according to information from CrunchBase. Today´s Snip.ly is not the same as the old Snip.ly, Michael Cheng told me in an e-mail a couple of weeks ago. They simply grabbed the domain name when it expired.

So what is Snip.ly?

Snip.ly is a service that combine URL shortening with conversation generation and tracking of the latter.

You enter a URL, a message and you customize the appearance of the pane that is show at the bottom of the linked URL.

How to use Snip.ly?

As with any service that you use to drive traffic and increase conversions, it is good to have some kind of plan for how you are going to use the service. Here I have created two Snip.ly links to showcase one way to work with the service.

  1. First Snip.ly: http://snip.ly/81Z/ (target URL: http://cadillac.com/escalade-suv.html)
  2. Second Snip.ly: http://snip.ly/qgH/ (target URL: http://cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-Cadillac-Escalade-San-Francisco-d142_L2793)

The idea here is to use the first Snip to share my love for SUVs and with the help of the second Snip I will drive (no pun intended) traffic to cargurus.com in order to initiate a buy-SUV-process.

If you arrive to gargurus.com using the second Snip (without passing through the first Snip), there is a link in the pane that will send you to Cadillac.com to read more about the Escalade.

Analytics?

Yes, Snip.ly track clicks (link clicks) as well as engagement (link clicks within embedded messages).

Pricing?

Yes there are some plans right now that you subscribe to if you want to be able to remove the Snip.ly logotype from the panes. If you want to be able to customize the message you’ll need to be on the Pro plan. If you fork out $100 USD per month you’ll get the option to use a custom shortlink, rather than letting others see snip.ly in front of the real URL.

Want more information?

Make sure you follow Snip.ly on Twitter and that you read Michael Cheng´s article on Medium where you’ll also find a YouTube clip with a presentation of the service.