Are you active online perhaps posting to a number of different blogs, websites and social media channels? How do you make it easy for people to find and follow your great content?
Sometimes you need to point people to a hub of links – for example in your email footer, on your business card or a post or link in a social media profile.
If you have a website and a short link too that is easy to do. But most people I know, especially when they are considering using online platforms to build their personal brand and when actively in job search mode usually don’t have this as an option to them.
That is where a hub platform is of assistance – so I was interested to check out a a new tool is now available that will be helpful to anyone who does not have their own website – called Linkkle.
In this tutorial, I share how easy it is to set up your online hub using this free to use tool.
I registered to join the platform with my email address. When you log into your dashboard you will see there is an option to connect to social networks – you can therefore use this as a way to log into your Linkkle account in the future.
The next step you need to take is to customise your profile by adding a profile image, your bio and you cn even change the colour of the text, the background of your account and the button colour.
Then comes the fun – you can decide what links you want to add to your Linkkle profile. Yes you could just add your social networks, but I recommend adding a call to action so that people who see your profile will be enticed to click through. This is made possible as you can add the URL where you want people to visit and add a title to that link. It is also easy to remove a link. Once you have finished adding your links remember to click ‘Save’.
Now it is time to review your Linkkle profile and make any adjustments you need to.
Here are four ways you could use Linkkle:
- If you are a freelance journalist or copywriter, why not link to your popular articles and a link to how people can hire you to creae content for them
- If you are a professional speaker and want to direct people to your onesheet, key note details, booking forms and even speaker showreel
- If you are a careerist and searching for your next role, add a link to your LinkedIn profile, social networks that represent you professionally and your portfolio
- If you are a small business, add links to your latest offers, the social media profile you are most active on and a registration page for your newsletter
- If you are using Instagram for business and want to generate leads from your posts, as you can only have one live link and that is on your bio, use your Linkkle account to link to your online store for the latest products you feature on your account.
And once you have your Linkkle hub set up you can add it to your email footer, your business card or anywhere that you use to promote your profile online or offline.
Additional Resource For Pro-Instagram Marketers
If you are looking for a more fully featured resource to add multiple links to your Instagram Bio you might want to check out Linktree – their paid plan includes the option to see a day-by-day breakdown of link traffic, schedule your links to go live in-line with scheduled posts and retarget your Linktree visitors on Facebook and Instagram by adding your Facebook Pixel ID.
You can of course add utm tracking codes and shorten your own links that you add to Linkkle if you want to increase your visibility of your metrics.
One thing that has been great about using Linkkle is that the developer is open to ideas to enhance the product and since I initially prepared the content for this tutorial he has made some helpfule updates including the ability to re-order your links and edit your links.
This makes it much easier as previously if you made an error on a link or wanted to change the order you had to delete your links and start over.
I definitely think Linkkle has a lot of potential options – you can check out my profile here which might give you some inspiration on how to put it to use for your personal brand online.
Bonus Resources For Creating A Link Hub For Your Personal Brand
There seems to be increasingly more tools available for creating hubs and soon after I came across Linkkle I then discovered another free resource Lnky.io. See an example of this by checking out my hub here. It is not as fully featured as Linkkle but if you just want to direct people to your key social networks it may be worth considering.
Other tools you can use for your link hup include About.me, WiseIntro, Connsuite, Spectrum, Shuuka and more recently platforms such as Dudr and PulseUno have been introduced.
ManyLink Provides A Platform To Curate Your Links
In April 2018, since originally publishing this article a new platform launched that I think has a lot of potential for curation of links called ManyLink.
It is currently free to register for an account and has a very minimal design. I really like that you can register with your email address rather than a social profile, especially for people who want to use this as a way of sharing links in Instagram but do not want to register with their Instagram profile.
Once you create your account it is easy to add your links in just three steps:
1 – Add a compleeling title for your link
2 – Add the url that you want people to visit when they click on the title
3 – Save the link.
You don’t have to worry about the order that you add your urls to ManyLink as it is easy to move them around:
1 – See the Add link feature at the top of the dashboard
2 – Use your mouse to drag the links and order them as you prefer them to be listed
3 – Amend the title or the URL for your link by clicking on the cog at the bottom of each link – this is handy of you want to update a URL or change your call to action.
You can then review your profile:
1 – Note how you can add your social profiles
2 – You can make your email address accessible for people to contact you
3 – You can review your links before you them promote your ManyLink profile or add it to your social media bios such as on Instagram and Twitter.
The developer is planning future updates including the ability to add collections of links which will be very handy for curating different sets of links dependent on where you want to share them to.
Other features the developer is planning to add include features such as Google analytics, widgets and custom domains.
Linkkle and ManyLink are definitely my favourite platforms this year for creating hugs for your social media profiles or URL’s that you want to share especially of you do not have your own website, such as if you are a professional in a role in an organisation but want to showcase your social media channels and key articles you have written that reflect your personal brand online.
What is your faviourite tool for creating hubs for your online links?
Campsite Provides A Best-In-Class Free Platform For Link Hubs
UPDATE 23 JANUARY 2018
Check out my tutorial on how to use Campsite for Instagram marketing and lead generation and why I think their free solution is now best in class – and their paid pro-account offers lots of features if you want to take your Instagram marketing to the next level.
Lnky – A New Link Hub Tool
UPDATE 24 MARCH 2019
Over the recent months I have noticed a number of new link hub tools launch. I was even approached by someone who had already created a hub featuring me, which they used in their demos and live streams, without asking prior permission.
When they did contact me to tell me about their service, I asked for access to be able to edit the hub myself. Unfortunately they did not want to give me access and promptly took me off their featured users as I was not open to having my profile be used to promote their platform, but not giving me access rights to be able to change the links that were featured!
Frankly I did not mind being taken off their list of featured acconts, as the service was inferor to the others I have featured here and was also not a great design. It is not one that I could imagine people would want to add to theri Instagram Bio.
However, a new too that caught my attention today was Lnky. It is currently free (there is small watermark at the bottom of the page).
Like some other tools I have featured for link hubs, you can easily add and re-order links, choose from a selection of their design templates and add your avatar and bio.
What is different is that they have Lnky.in integrate Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and create UTM sources. See the screen capture below.
The developer has commented that the platform will always have a free option just like TapBio which was launched in 2018.
At the time of updating this article, ther is no privacy policy or reference to GDPR so it may be a platform you want to watch for a while and explore when these features are added. I also noticed there was no way to log out of the service (I was using FireFox as my browser).
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