#18 - Investigating The Misunderstood Features In HubSpot: Part 2 - Linking Bitly

HubnSpoke team of Adam Steinhardt and Zaahn Johnson return to continue their mission in this edition, to drill down deep into the features of HubSpot and begin to address some of those under-utilised and misunderstood aspects of HubSpot, a powerful cloud-based sales and marketing platform.

HubSpot’s diverse set of software tools can mean that even the most experienced Hubspotter can at times feel overwhelmed. Recent tools revealed as part of Inbound 2016 have added even more power across the sales, marketing and CRM, allowing you to maximise the effectiveness of inbound methodology in new and dynamic ways.

Social Media Expert, Zaahn Johnson takes the lead this week, with an in-depth examination of the hidden power of HubSpot integration, Bit.ly:

Bit.ly was first established in 2008 as a tool with a very practical purpose - to shorten URLs for Twitter. Originally, it broke links down into 8 characters to give you more character space. That function remains a defining feature of bit.ly but, things have now evolved beyond Twitter and the function persists as an even more valueable tool.

The bit.ly website is free to use to a certain point, but there are paid tiers to getting the most out of it. The most powerful aspect of bit.ly is that it stores all of the links you shorten. Beyond that, you can also see the number of clicks the link has had.

You can connect your indeividual bit.ly account to HubSpot, so what this means if you don’t connect your account to HubSpot and your links get shortened they become Hubs.ly links. Bit.ly have allowed businesses to purchase their own domain for their platform, though before you go and purchase your own personalized links, you’ll want to do your research on what competitive advantage you can gain from it will be.

One thing to consider is whether using a Hubs.ly link is going to reveal to your competitors that you are using the HubSpot platform, potentially giving away a serious competitive advantage you have in the market. When you can utilize the same functionality, while remaining ambiguous when you post, it won't be a feature for everyone.