You can see the likes, but not what happens after the link
Posts on social media are often meant to send people to a shop's booking page, a product page, or a blog article. But what social media screens show is mostly impressions and likes, and how many people clicked the link and actually reached the page stays hard to grasp.
Even if you look at your own site's numbers in Google Analytics, people from social media are often lumped together and you can't tell which post they came from. Short URLs are a feature for counting that connection from post to page. The idea of click-through rate is covered on the CTR glossary page.
Replace the URL in the body with the switch in the composer
You create short links in the post composer. When you write a URL in the body, a "Shorten URLs" switch appears in the right-hand panel. Turn it on and when the post goes out, the URL in the body is replaced with a short link that counts clicks. The link is short, in the form https://sns.town/l/ followed by 7 characters.
Only URLs longer than a short link are replaced. A URL that is already short is left as it is, since replacing it wouldn't make it shorter. A URL that is already an SNS TOWN short link isn't replaced again. There is no screen for creating short links on their own; they are created in only two places, the composer and Drafts from RSS. Because each post and short link are tied one to one, you never wonder which post a link belongs to.
One company or brand can create up to 2,000 short links.
A marker (UTM) showing which network the visitor came from is added automatically
A person who clicks a short link is sent to the original URL. At that moment, a UTM marker is added to the end of the original URL automatically. UTM is a set of named parameters added to a URL so that tools like Google Analytics can tell where a visitor came from. According to Google's explanation, utm_source shows where the visitor came from, utm_medium the channel, and utm_campaign the name of the product or campaign (Google Analytics Help).
SNS TOWN puts the name of the network you post to in utm_source and social in utm_medium. For drafts created from RSS, rss is also put in utm_campaign. If the original URL already has a marker with the same name, it is overwritten with the SNS TOWN value. The thinking behind UTM, and how to choose campaign names yourself, is covered in Measuring Results with UTM and Short URLs.
See click counts on the post's page
Open the page of a post that has gone out and a "Link clicks" card appears. It shows the total the link has been clicked so far and the count for the last 7 days, and you can check the original URL. Counts are kept per day in Japan time.
Only clicks by people are counted. When you put a link in a post, networks visit the link automatically to build the card image and title. Search engine robots visit in the same way. Counting these would make the number rise even though nobody clicked, so SNS TOWN identifies automatic visits and leaves them out. We don't keep the IP address or device information of the person who clicked.
It saves characters
How much of the body's character limit a URL uses differs by network. The SNS TOWN composer shows the remaining characters following each network's way of counting.
| Destination | How a URL in the body is counted | Difference when shortened |
|---|---|---|
| X | 23 characters regardless of length (counted in half-width) | The count doesn't change |
| Threads, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn | Each character of the URL is counted | The longer the URL, the more room you gain |
On networks other than X, turning a long URL into a short link frees up room in the body. How each network counts characters is summarized in Character Limits and How They Are Counted on Each Network.
Note that on X, posts with a URL in the body tend to be less likely to be recommended. The SNS TOWN pre-post check also shows a caution for URLs in posts written by people. Decide whether to include a link according to the purpose of the post.
How to use it
Write a URL in the body in the composer, turn on "Shorten URLs" in the right-hand panel, and post or schedule as usual. After it goes out, open that post from the posts list and you can see the click count card. How to create a post is in the guide Posting Right Now, and how to read numbers for posts that went out is in Peak Viewing Times and Numbers for Each Post.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a screen for creating only short links?
No. Short links are created only with "Shorten URLs" in the composer and in drafts created from RSS. This makes sure each post and link are always tied one to one.
Is the click count the same as the number in a network's analytics?
No, it won't be the same. The link clicks that a network's analytics reports follow that network's own way of counting, while the SNS TOWN number is the number of people who passed through the short link. Because automatic visits are left out, it may be lower than the network's number.
Can I use a short link on my own domain?
Not at the moment. All short links start with sns.town/l/.
What happens to the short link if I delete the post?
Even if you delete the post from the social network, the short link itself keeps redirecting to the original URL. This is so that links already shared elsewhere don't break.
Can I set the UTM values myself?
For short links created from the composer, utm_source and utm_medium are filled in automatically. If you want to add something like a campaign name, add utm_campaign and so on to the original URL before writing it in the body, and those markers are kept too.
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