We use shortening URL services like TinyURL, Bit.ly, su.pr, etc. on daily basis. These services are great, but would you like to create something similar on your own? Well setting up such service is an easy task, and if you are using WordPress it too comes with a plug-in that works seamlessly well.

And one of the advantages of setting up URL shortener is the online branding of your site, the more people see your brand name, the more likely they are to remember it. Because of this, it’s a good idea to have a URL with your brand name.

You can also configure the shortener to see stats and other useful details.

There are various online resources which let you shorten your long URL links making them much shorter and easier to share on social services.  But with a growing need for short URLs, using a good URL shortening script will help.

So today we are going to discuss the various methods to self-host a URL shortener using their own domain name. If you own a domain, then it is very easy to do it with very little technical skills required.

Getting Started:

To get started with this, go to Shortener.godaddy.com & login with your GoDaddy account. If you don’t have an account, head over to GoDaddy’s main page & buy a domain name. Well, the thing which most interesting about GoDaddy’s URL shortener is that you can create a short URL using your own domain name.

It is recommended to buy a 5 to 4 letter domain name for keeping your URL short. You can also transfer your existing domain name from other registrars to GoDaddy & then use GoDaddy’s URL shortener.

Also, check out:

Some of the features of this tool are:

• Check history of all shortened URL’s
• Detailed statistics
• Edit or delete URL
• Disable short link at anytime
• Offer API

Steps for Creating a URL shortener using GoDaddy Tool under your domain name:

• Once on Shortener.godaddy.com, click on “Settings” at the top.
•  To get your A & TXT record, first click on “Help”, on the settings page that we will need to update. This will point our domain to GoDaddy’s URL shortener.

Editing a record & TXT Value on GoDaddy:

• Login to your GoDaddy account and click on “Domains”
• Click on the domain name which you want to configure as a branded short URL
• On the page, click on “Finish” and on the next page click on “Save Changes”.
• Similarly, add the TXT Value and click on “Save Changes”.

Adding custom domain to GoDaddy’s URL shortener

Usually, the changes take effect within 5 minutes.

Go back to the GoDaddy URL shortener & click on “Settings”. There you will find two fields other than the domain name.

Those are:

• Base redirects you to: By leaving this field blank, users will be redirected to our shortener. Enter another domain, and they’ll go there instead.
• Case sensitivity: Shortened links that are case insensitive will treat upper and lower case links the same while selecting sensitive will be a whole different scenario.

         You may see this error “Your domain hasn’t been verified. This can take a few minutes.”

It means the changes have not been replicated and you need to wait for sometime. Also, ensure that you don’t have a duplicate record. You can also use a DNS lookup to check the updated record. Once everything is ready and configured, you can start shortening your URL’s under your branded domain name.

Alternate methods to create branded custom domain URL shortener:

1) YOURLS (Your Own URL Shortener):

One of the popular methods is using the YOURLS script, which is available on Github. It allows you to create something similar to TinyURL and Bit.ly. 

The best thing about YOURLS is the plugins. You can add many features to your URL shortener with these plugins. But you will require more technical skill for running the YOURLS script than the previous method.

You may also like:

If you are accustomed to using FTP, database, and making changes in your core file, you should be able to configure YOURLS with no problems. I recommend you first try it on your local installation of PHP and MYSQL servers. You can refer to the below guides for configuring a local PHP and MySQL server.

2) Bit.ly:

Another popular method is using Bit.ly to create a shortened URL. I have been using it for a while but after news about Bit.ly adding affiliate tokens to many shortened URLs under the free account, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

You can also read upcoming Domain Hunter Gatherer Black Friday Sale article

Conclusion: How to Create a URL Shortener Using Your Domain Name 2022

Among all of the given methods, the GoDaddy method is pretty easy to use and one can get started with the branded URL shortener in no time, as they are very user-friendly. If you are using any URL shorting method then let me know in the comment section. Show your love and support by sharing this article on the social media platform, it may help others too.

Are you looking to drive more traffic to your website? Do you want to generate more leads that you can easily convert? Are you searching for ways to increase sales and ROI?

Then, you’ve come to the right place! Here you’ll learn how to create an online quiz for social media, which will help you increase audience engagement, generate qualified leads, and supercharge your sales.

Quizzes are generally fun, which is precisely why people love them. Creating a quiz relevant to your brand can really help you increase traffic, improve online visibility and SEO ranking, and yield positive results regarding your lead capture and conversion.

 

{Detailed Guide} How to Create an Online Quiz For Social Media 2022

Without further ado, read on to explore this step-by-step guide to creating your own social media quiz.

• Set up a Goal for Your Social Media Quiz

To make sure your online quiz is effective, you need to start with your goal. What is it that you want to accomplish with your social media quiz? What data do you want to collect? What do you want your quiz takers to do?

Only when you establish a clear objective and goal of your online quiz will you be able to make sure it actually helps you achieve that goal.

Here’s an example of Airbnb’s Trip Matcher quiz to help you get the big picture.

It’s a personality quiz for helping people find their travel personality, before providing them with an Airbnb trip itinerary for their next vacation. Once the quiz takers get their results, they can explore all the other travel personalities, each coming with its own exciting trip itinerary.

Since Airbnb is a hospitality service, a quiz about travel personalities definitely hits the bullseye. Offering trip itineraries that fit the quiz takers’ interests will help the hospitality giant capture more leads, and increase sales.

 

• Consider Your Target Audience’s Needs

This is just as important as your goal. You need to create an online quiz that provides real value to your audience, and you can’t do that if you don’t address their needs.

 

Find out your audience’s biggest pain points, and thoroughly think about how you will address them in your quiz. If you manage to tap into your audience’s emotions and truly engage them in the quiz, they will gladly give you the necessary information for following up and keeping in touch.

Creating a Social Media Quiz: Step-By-Step Guide

Once you have your goal, and you know what your target audience needs, you can start creating your online quiz. Here are all the steps you need to take.

 

 

• Choose the Right Type of Quiz

There are two main types of quizzes for social media that you can choose from:

• Personality quizzes
• Knowledge tests.

 

Personality Quizzes

A personality quiz, as its name suggests, helps people learn more about themselves. Once your quiz takers are categorized into different personalities, you can provide them with personalized recommendations regarding your products and services.

For instance, if your target audience consists of bloggers, you can create a “What Kind of a Blogger Are You?” quiz. You can incentivize your quiz takers to share their details with you by offering a free eBook on better blogging, for example or anything else that will give them real value.

Knowledge Tests

Knowledge tests are types of quizzes that help people assess how much they know about a particular subject.

By creating a quiz just like the example above, you can help your quiz takers know where they stand on a particular topic – in this instance, coffee.

The incentive to get them to subscribe to your email list could be, for instance, offering them exclusive access to your healthy coffee recipes. You could also offer discounts for your espresso makers, for example.

You can easily wrap your quiz, no matter the type, around any product or service you’re offering. For instance, if you’re selling furniture, you can create a “What Is Your Interior Design Style?” quiz, and offer personalized product recommendations, specifically tailored to the answers the users gave. The options are really limitless.

 

 

• Come Up with a Captivating Title

 

This is perhaps the most important part of every online quiz. If the title is not catchy, people simply won’t click through and take the quiz.

So, you need to come up with something captivating that instantly grabs attention. You need to craft a headline that evokes emotions and makes people unable to resist taking the quiz. The title of your quiz is precisely what will help you get higher CTR (click-through rates).

How can you create quiz titles that actually get clicked? You can choose from the two main types of titles:

 

• The “Actually” titles

 

 

The “Actually” Title

When you add the word “actually” into the title of a quiz, the quiz instantly becomes a challenge that rarely anyone can ignore. 

This is a perfect title, if you have, let’s say, an eBook on online marketing. You can offer its free version, or an engaging excerpt, to everyone who subscribes to your email list.

 

The Comparison Title

These are all those “What/Which (blank) Are You?” titles for personality quizzes. You can use this type of title for pretty much any topic.

Instead of “digital marketer” in the example above, you can insert literally anything relevant to your brand that will address the needs of your target audience.

 

 

• Create Compelling Questions

 

Once you have the type and title of your quiz worked out, it’s time to come up with interesting and relevant questions that will keep your quiz takers engaged until the end. You need to make sure that they actually complete your quiz, instead of abandoning it halfway through.

To make your questions as engaging and effective as possible, you should:

• Keep them short and sweet – Don’t overwhelm your quiz takers with long, complex questions. Keep them concise, and don’t provide more than 5 answers per question.

Also, keep the quiz length between 5-10 questions, as that way it won’t take longer than 2-3 minutes for people to take your quiz. Anything longer than that, and you’ll make most of the people bounce back.

 

• Enrich them with captivating images – Adding images to each question (especially to each answer per question) will keep people engaged, and help you make a real connection with them.

• Stick to a relaxed, friendly tone – Craft questions in a friendly tone that reminds of a relaxed conversation with a friend. That way, your quiz takers will instantly feel genuinely comfortable answering all the questions.

This is great for showcasing your personality, and humanizing your brand, especially if you choose to sound a bit informal, which definitely isn’t something to be afraid of. People actually engage more in informal conversations.

 

 

• Craft an Engaging Lead Capture

 

Now, this is where the magic happens. This is where you incentivize your quiz takers to do something that will help you achieve the goal of your quiz. That’s getting them to sign up for your email list, which helps you move a step further in your marketing strategy and generate more conversions and ROI.

It is absolutely vital that you save your lead capture form for the part of the quiz that’s right before the results. There’s no point in trying to capture leads after you’ve provided the quiz results because there’s no incentive to get people to subscribe.

When creating your lead capture form, make sure you have these three crucial things in mind:

Value – If you ask for an email address, and offer nothing in return except for the quiz results, many people may bounce back. This is simply because they wouldn’t want you to potentially bombard them with irrelevant emails every single day (which you should never do).

You need to let them know exactly what value they will get if they subscribe to your email list. You can offer discounts, coupons, a free eBook, an entry to a free giveaway, or anything else that will make them want to share their details with you.

You can also choose to include the option to skip the opt-in step, like in the example above, if you’re perhaps only looking to drive more traffic to your website.

Honesty – You need to be completely transparent when it comes to your marketing strategy so that people know exactly what they’re signing up for. If you plan on sending them daily follow-up emails, let them know, so that they can make an informed decision.

Minimum information requested – Never ask for more information that you’ll actually need. If you’re only going to need your quiz takers’ email addresses, maybe even their first and last names, don’t ask for more information. For instance, don’t ask for a phone number if you’re never going to give them a call.

Requesting only the most necessary information is what will help you actually capture more leads.

 

 

• Create Relevant, Shareworthy Results

 

At this stage of your quiz, you’ve already accomplished your goal, that is, compelled people to sign up to your email list. However, the results you craft are just as important, because you want your quiz takers to actually share them on social media, and help you extend your reach.

Social media platforms give you an opportunity to reach a wide, global audience, so you need to make sure your quiz results truly entice people to share them.

To create the results that people will be more than happy to share on social media, you need to:

Implement eye-catching images – Using high-quality images that instantly grab attention is an absolute must for your quiz results. This is because the image is the first thing people will see when they come across the results someone shared on social media.

Use positive emotions – Positive emotions are precisely what will make people share the results of your quiz. Compliment your quiz takers, and focus only on their best traits, because who doesn’t like being praised for their personality? However, make sure you speak only the truth.

 

Include a compelling CTA – To get the most out of your social media quiz, you should include a CTA (call to action) at the end of the results.

Your CTA could be inviting people to check out your blog and find out more about your brand. It could be a link to your landing page or a product page with personalized recommendations.

 

Or, like in the example above, it could be a link to your guide, an eBook, or anything else of value. Include anything that will entice your audience to keep interacting with your brand, and don’t forget to add social media sharing buttons!

Also Read:

Conclusion: {Detailed Guide} How to Create an Online Quiz For Social Media 2022

Now you’re ready to create an online quiz for social media that people will absolutely love, and share. Just follow this comprehensive guide, and you’ll soon have lots of fun quizzes to share on social media and generate plenty of leads.

When it comes to content marketing, it’s no secret that a well-balanced mix of owned, paid and earned media is critical to success. To truly create a comprehensive plan, one that effectively captures customers, marketers must consider that the lines between each of these three types of media has blurred–one influencing the other and vice versa. And therefore, the solid approach will no longer cut it. Instead, you must choreograph the successful interplay of these three types of media.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, more than 80% of both B2B and B2C marketers said they create and then host content on their own assets–owned media. Additionally, 92% of B2C marketers and 80% of B2B marketers said they used at least one paid advertising method to promote and/or distribute content. Unlike owned and paid, earned media can’t be fully controlled from the comfort of a corporate armchair, making this the most difficult of the three-part mixed-marketing plan to influence and acquire.

But it’s impact cannot be ignored. Webbed Feed reported that 92% of consumers say they trust earned media, while only half trust paid ads. Earned media drives 4 times the brand lift of paid media and 51% of millennials are more likely to be influenced by earned media, according to BazaarVoice. And Conductor reported that lead generation driven by earned media out-performs lead generation driven by paid media by a delta of 10-15%. Earned media is a veritable unicorn–magical, powerful and beautiful.

This type of media is the most influential of the trio. In fact, it is this modern equivalent of classic word of mouth that will differentiate the content marketing standard from the stellar in the years to come.

Typically, earned media is sparked from supremely effective uses of paid and owned media. From there, people share, tweet, comment and, in the best cases, link to your content in their own posts. The challenge: You can’t force people (at least not in good conscience) to share or link to your content. What’s more, you can’t predict with 100% certainty whether or not your efforts will result in links. You can, however, be smarter about the content you produce.

With a bit of strategic research, some carefully penned content, and a few tweaks to both readability and format, you can increase the likelihood that you will earn links.

1. Don’t reinvent the wheel

 

There’s no shortage of content out there. Social media automation company Buffer admitted to losing 50 percent of their viewership due to what’s being called the Content Crush. Buffer’s content curators argue that this content crush–or excessive amount of available content–makes it even harder to create a splash in the Internet ocean.

To overcome this, it’s more imperative than ever for marketers to use the insights from content that’s already driving traffic as a springboard for their own original articles. Ensure that your content doesn’t become yet another article that doesn’t yield results by doing your homework. Take a look at what’s already catching reader attention through the use of one of the many online tools. Just pick a keyword, and start searching.

• Google Search: A simple Google search will show you the results Google (and therefore readers) deem most useful. Review these results, taking note of style and format. Then, think of ways you can improve upon it or put a fresh spin that you don’t already see represented in what you find.
• Buzzsumo: Buzzsumo is a content intelligence tool. While this tool may not prove useful to laypeople, to businesses seeking to capture attention with content, it provides invaluable information necessary for strategic planning. To use the content intelligence tool, simply enter any topic or domain, such as customer service techniques or forbes.com to return a list of high-performing articles. You can filter by date, language, content type and more. The list of results also includes the total number of shares broken down by social network.
• Ahrefs: Ahrefs.com monitors keywords, backlinks and brand mentions through the use of a proprietary web crawler. Take the content you’ve gathered from google search and Buzzsumo, and use Ahrefs backlink checker to see who’s linking to it. Keep that in mind when youÕre writing, because you can frame your content specifically for a particular website or audience.

Ahrefs also offers a Content Explorer, similar to the one offered by BuzzSumo, allowing you to identify the most shared content relevant to your business. Also explore here some high quality backlinks methods which can help you get more organic traffic.

2. Think about searchers queries

If you want other businesses to link to your article, you need to think like content marketers –their content marketers. What are they going to search when researching support for their own articles? To create reliable and professional articles, these writers will likely look for statistics and data to support their arguments. Increase the probability that they land on your article by pairing the keyword with the words they might include in an attempt to narrow their search results. Try words similar to:

Attention : Hootsuite Review: Top Reasons to Buy Hootsuite(Pros & Cons)

• Facts
• Information
• Data
• Statistics
• Benchmarks
• Best Practices

When you couple the above with your keyword, and you’ve significantly increased your link intent. You increase the likelihood that content developers will find and use your article to support the arguments they’re making in their own content.

3. Crown your content with a killer headline

According to Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the remainder of the text. You have literally a couple of seconds to snag a scanner’s attention. “The Father of Advertising”, David Ogilvy urged advertisers to remember the importance of the headline, famously saying, On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

Do your headlines need some TLC? Making your headlines engaging isn’t quite as hard as you may think. While you’ll still need to flex some creative muscle to pen a headline that shines, following some basic rules can make your headline immediately more appealing:

• Include a number or other specific data (i.e. Quick Ways to Increase Conversions by 50%)
• Make it a list title (i.e. The 7 Secrets to Busting Belly Fat)
• Stick to odd numbers Ñoddly enough, according to the Content Marketing Institute, readers tend to believe them more
• Use a colon or hyphen in the headline
• Make the headline a question to get readers thinkingÑand clicking
• Include rationale or a reason why the reader should go deeper
• Write with a sense of urgency

4. Provide actionable raw data

Many searchers take to the web seeking a specific fact or figure. How about giving them what they want? People looking for a statistics absolutely hate slogging through an entire article to get it. Providing tables or charts can help readers easily access and digest information, endearing them to your simple and easy style.

5. Write with the web in mind

This may go without saying, but articles that drive links are typically engaging, scannable and easy to digest. Online readers aren’t really reading they’re scanning. Serve up content in bite-sized chunks, using bulleted lists and subheads to break it up. Content that’s easy to absorb is easy to share. And be sure to pay attention to readability. While flowery language reminiscent of a writer from the Romantic era may sound fancy and be pleasing to the ear, it’s going to turn-off your average reader. Twenty-one percent of adults read at a fifth grade level, so your lofty sounding prose, rich in jargon, will likely find a small audience.

6. Obtain powerful quotes

Including quotes from experts and/or industry influencers is one of the most effective ways to boost the credibility of your content. Again, it’s important that the quotes are relevant to the source content, are accurate and add value to the reader. This is also a great way to generate more links to your site: if you include a link to your expert’s site from your content, they may return the favor.

Attention : BuzzBundle Review:Drive Traffic with Powerful SMM Tool

7. DonÕt forget the design

Impressing a modern Internet user is far more difficult than it was back when the whole idea was shiny and new. Today, web searchers donÕt just want information. They want information that’s dressed up and topped with a bow. A poorly designed website can hurt your credibility just as much as a website containing weak copy. By creating an attractive website to frame your content, you can capture the discriminating web searcher and make yourself–and your content–seem legitimate and worthy of attention.

Bonus: Make it worth their while

There’s a growing trend among content providers, offering a meaningful incentives or bonus content to readers who finish an entire article. This typically requires the reader to enter their email address or share the content on their social media networks before gaining access. People like positive reinforcement, so getting something for actually attending to an entire article–a feat in these frenetic times–can provide the little extra motivation that readers need to both finish and share your articles.

What other tips and strategies do you use for creating high-performing content?