We all share content every day. We share links to podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos, and social media posts with friends, clients, and prospects.
Sometimes we even broadcast those links to thousands of complete strangers. And the people we share those links with often click on them to find out what the big deal is.
But, what if every time someone clicked on your link they were also presented with a subtle promotion for your brand, website, YouTube channel, product, or service? Wouldn’t that be cool?
Well, that’s what Snip.ly lets you do. And in fact, it is very cool.
In this interview Michael Cheng, founder and CEO of Snip.ly explains the power of the platform and gives examples of how it is being used to drive conversions across a variety of industries.
Give a listen to find out why Snip.ly has been featured on Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com, QuickSprout, and HubSpot.
More Info:
https://www.snip.ly https://twitter.com/sniply
https://www.facebook.com/sniplyapp
https://www.linkedin.com/company/snip.ly/about/
What follows is a computerize transcription of our entire conversation. Please excuse any typos!
I don’t believe you’re born with entrepreneurial DNA. I think the entrepreneurial DNA is a results of all the failures you’ve experienced.
You know, I try to talk about a lot of different things on Radio Free Enterprise. And one of the things I talk about is the difference between a growth business and a lifestyle business and lifestyle business is sort of your typical mom and pop doctor, lawyer, candlestick maker, local restaurant runner, people who make a great living from their business, but are not the kind of business that you would necessarily see on Shark Tank or our CNBC. They’re raising millions of dollars in venture capital and, and trying to be the next Uber or what have you.
There’s a very important distinction between those two types of businesses, the founders of those businesses have a lot of common challenges that they share. And I often say that my target audience of people out there listening are the founders, the leaders of founder led companies. So that could be a growth business or lifestyle business.
Today, I want to bring you the founder of a growth business. And another interesting aspect of what he’s doing is the viral nature of the marketing that he’s doing the way that I found out about his, his platform I’ll describe here shortly. But I just think there’s a lot of great lessons that today’s guests can bring to all of us, no matter what type of business we’re running.
So I want to welcome Michael Chang, founder of snip leader, Radio Free Enterprise.
Hello, everyone. And thank you so much for having me, Frank,
What is Snip.ly?
Thank you for being here today, Michael, let’s take off right out of the gate with, you know, it occurred to me that the trying to describe Snip.ly in an audio format is kind of like trying to describe a color or a smell, you know, it’s like, well, it’s kind of like this. But anyway, I imagine you’ve had to do this as as a founder of a growth company. What is your elevator speech? explanation of Snip.ly?
Yes, of course. And at the beginning, it was especially difficult like you describe it’s like a color that they’ve never seen or smell that they’ve never experienced. And so it was one of my greatest challenges in how to explain simply because simply because it’s so visual. And you have to see it, once you see it, you get it, but the way I explain it is businesses share content all the time. And you think about the past 10 links you’ve read, it’s probably on social media. But brands and businesses don’t share links for fun, they share it for a very specific purpose to spread their brand awareness, but ultimately to drive a conversion.
And so what Snip.ly empowers brands and businesses to do is to add that conversion opportunity, a call to action, and included into the links that they share so that even as you’re sharing links from the verge or box, you can still include a piece of your own branding in that link, and also a call to action to direct your visitors to do what you want them to do.
Well, let me give you an example. I think that’s an excellent explanation. And obviously, you’ve had a lot of time to craft that message, I have a slide just to explain to listeners who still may not be exactly tracking with what you’re saying.
I’m Facebook friends with a person named David Doost. And David shared a piece of content that I thought was really fascinating. So what he did was he dropped a URL from an article onto a post on Facebook. So there was the headline of the article which got my attention. There was David’s little two or three word reason why he found it interesting. There was the featured graphic from the article from the website, wherever the article was found. And there was the first whatever it is 150 characters from the article. I looked at all of that.
And I said, Yeah, that’s interesting to me. And David’s a smart guy. I’m always interested in things that he shares, I’ll click on that link, clicked on the link up pops the article, let’s just say it was on the Washington Post. And I noticed though immediately that at the bottom of the page, here’s a little banner with David Doost’s face. And a little message from David, that said, If you’d like to learn more about whatever it was, and it was a call to action that was congruent with the piece of content, the message of the content that he had shared, there was a button that said click here. And then I did click here and I was taken to one of David’s web properties. So this is how Snip.ly works. And this is what Michael was describing is that we as individuals, or as business owners, share content to be a thought leader, but we also the ultimate objective is to drive conversions. So does that did that do a decent job of giving sort of a case study of what you’re doing?
Yeah, that’s a fantastic use case. And we see it all the time. And it’s really about giving credit to the person who shared it and also acknowledging and recognize Noticing who sent you to that valuable piece of content. And it’s also for from the sharing perspective, it’s an opportunity to customize the reading experience custom tailored to your own audience. It’s your message that’s being shown to people who follow you. So it’s very interesting in that respect as well. It really is. And I’ve just, I’m really just starting to learn about it. I’ve got so many questions asked me.
Where Did the Idea for Snip.ly Come From?
But let’s let’s go to the next sort of question begging to be asked, which is, where did this idea come from Michael?
Yeah. So it’s obviously not a eureka moment, you know, many things that tie to ultimately the idea of Snip.ly. But if I could try and do my best to pinpoint a eureka moment, it was when somebody asked me what was my return on investment for all the time I spend on social media. So for previous businesses that I’ve been involved with, I spend a lot of time especially sharing content, curating content on social media, and of course, I get likes, retweets followers. But at the end of the day, what is the tangible return on investment?
If I spent eight hours getting seven followers and nine likes, what does that mean, for my business, it’s very difficult to translate that intangible social metric into something that I can use on, say, a spreadsheet. And so Snip.ly is all about creating that solid conversion opportunity. And in order for that to happen, there needs to be a conversion opportunity. So a call to action of some sort, a measurable conversion needs to occur on the page. So Snip.ly is all about including that opportunity, so that I can say, Okay, I spent eight hours curating content. And I got three click throughs, on my call to action, which landed on my page, and one of them ultimately purchased my product.
So that’s where the idea came from, is the question of what is the return of as on investment with social media? What is the return on investment on content curation? And simply is all about answering that question, and helping people find the answer to that question.
What Sort of Analytics Does Snip.ly Offer?
Well, I was going to ask this question later in the interview, but it just leads right out of what you were just saying, what sort of metrics and analytics does Snip.ly offer to people so they can see what type of benefits and results are getting?
Yes. So on the very basic level, there’s clicks and conversions and conversion rates. So that refers to how many people are clicking on the links, you’re sharing? How many people are engaging with the call to action that you include inside the link? And what is the ratio between those numbers. And that gives you a really good sense of how effective the content you’re sharing is and how effective your value proposition is. I’ve seen businesses with as high as 40% conversion rate to as low as 0.4% conversion rate. So it’s all about experimentation. Just like if you’re writing a Google ad, you know, you have a very limited amount of characters, how do you capture the attention and imagination of people such that they would engage with your call to action. And so those are some of the key tricks is clicks and conversions.
And then beyond that, there’s a lot of interesting analytics that you don’t normally get, let’s say you share an article, The Washington Post, you know how many clicks you get, but you don’t know how long they stay on the page, how many pages they visit after they click through your link. So you could be sharing a BuzzFeed article, for example, and they could get a million links, but you don’t know the bounce rate. If the bounce rate is 99.99%, then you’re not actually delivering value. The fact that you got a million clicks is actually misleading to the quality of content that you’re sharing.
But with Snip.ly, you actually get metrics such as when I share a content when I share when I send somebody to an article, how long are they spending on that article? How many pages are they reading after they click through on my link? So there’s analytics there that lets you refine your content sharing strategy as well.
It’s just tremendous. I spent a lot of time you sent me the link to your YouTube channel. And I was quite taken with the fact that all of the YouTube videos, were not none of them. At least that I saw. As I started from the top, I’ve got about 10 deep, were produced by Snip.ly. But rather they were all produced by users. were like, Hey, I got to show you this cool new thing I just found. And what I really got from that was two different things. One is, there are a lot of different ways to derive value.
There was a video about how to drive more traffic to your blog, and you know how to drive more traffic to your podcast, how do I saw a guy who’s using Snip.ly to try to help build his downline in a multi level marketing business? Just all types of things. And the other part of it is that I saw each person’s if you will take on it, what their perspective was on it, what is this thing Snip.ly and how they tried to put a name on it? And so it just sort of helped me sort of triangulate and synthesize what my thought was about what Snip.ly was.
But let’s, let’s keep moving along with I could really talk to you about this for a very, very long time. With the what I was just talking about all the different people that are using it, and I imagine that back it does Snip.ly HQ, you get to see all the 40,000 foot metrics and all the different use cases. Tell us about a couple of the coolest or most interesting uses you’ve seen for this.
Interesting Snip.ly Use Cases and Success Stories
Yeah, my favorite is Greenpeace and Greenpeace has been one of our biggest users from the beginning. But, you know, we built this product primarily with business and brands in mind. And so when I first saw nonprofits using Snip.ly, it was very interesting because the call to action is towards a cause.
And I remember very clearly the first link I saw was Greenpeace shares an article that was about I think, whales, you know, they were not being treated fairly, there was a number of issues with wildlife that they represent. So but this one in particular was about whales. And there was a call to action from Greenpeace using Snip.ly that says, sign this petition. Right. So it’s very clear, you’re reading a content about the extinction of whales and how they’re being mistreated, and all the problems that are going on in the world that are threatening the livelihood of whales. And there’s a direct call to action from Greenpeace that says, sign this petition to help us or the cause. And it was so powerful.
And I remember the call to action, the conversion rate on that call to action was well over 50%. And it was amazing. And it just spoke so clearly to me that when paired with the right content, and the right call to action, there’s a real value that can be created. Because when you’re reading an article, as a reader, oftentimes you want to take action. But publications aren’t going to spend the time to class your call to actions on the page, you’re going to have to maybe Google a foundation that represents Wales, and then mind their petition and sign it. So even if you want to take action. Oftentimes, it’s not that easy.
And so what Greenpeace has done is using Snip.ly, they’ve made it really easy to take action on the spot after you’ve read about a cause you care about. And so since then, a lot of nonprofits have used snippets. And to this day, it’s still one of my favorite and highest converting call to actions when it comes to use cases.
I love that that is such a great example. And cheez it everything you say brings to mind about 10 more questions. Let me ask you something, uh, you know, we talked about the metrics a moment ago, and how, you know, bounce rate and a lot of things that you see, let’s say with Google Analytics or other types of analytics, once somebody comes, let’s say I, let’s say I’m Greenpeace, and I say, click this button to sign the petition. What do my internal analytics tell me? Do they tell me that this visitor came from Snip.ly, or they came from the Washington Post or wherever that article was?
You have both of those information. So if you’re familiar with Google Analytics, you have UTM tags. And so the UTM tags actually includes both of those information. So this Snip.ly link includes where the link is. So if it’s Washington Post, the Snip.ly link once unfolded, would actually look something like Snip.ly slash ABCD. Question mark, Washington Post com. Okay, so the URL includes both pieces of those information. So you can very easily segment your analytics such that it completely ignores simply, for example, you can just see where traffic is coming from normally, or you can filter specifically, I want to know how many clicks or views are coming from Snip.ly specifically or any combinations of those.
What about if I wanted to know which one of my Snip.ly messages was working the best because there are so many different variables, I can change, you know, the call to action, what the button says I can change the coloring of it, I can change what the graphic is. You know, I could I guess that’s you’ve got a lot of different things. But there’s a lot of things I could change in terms of the look and feel and functionality of the Snip.ly bar, whatever you want to refer to it as does it track Can I track that.
So technically, you could do that in Google Analytics. But for really Snip.ly analytics, I recommend using our dashboard, which would have everything you need, because our dashboard includes a B testing features that allows you to test different colors, different buttons, different messaging, and it displays all of those analytics separately so that you can optimize and make those decisions. And really, as a marketing tool, that’s all we’re about is empowering users to experiment with different marketing messages and see what works better and be able to increase their conversion rates over time. So the analytics is really a tool to help them improve the analytics. And everything is available in this employee dashboard. But of course, you can do that in Google Analytics as well. But our dashboard is built specifically to help you measure those things.
Well, I don’t want to get too deeply into the arcane with this, because many, many listeners may have already tuned out as we started talking analytics too much. So let me say another thing that I think is important, which is just pure branding, when I click on this thing, and let’s use the David duced example I was talking about before, I then associate David, his name, his face everything with that content and with the headline and with the graphics that are on that page, because they are literally being presented all together to my eyes, as I see it. And so whether or not I click on is a call to action. There’s Still a branding benefit to the person who uses snipping?
That’s right. Okay, ah, blah, blah, blah, I’m just I’ve got, I usually try to go in a very linear fashion with my questions, but I just my brain is just on fire with all those.
What About Content Publishers?
Okay, um, now here’s one thing I was interested to see, as I was watching all the different videos, and is that Snip.ly is so effective, that it’s actually in some circles a little bit controversial. And I thought, you know, they often say if, if you’re not upsetting somebody, you’re not doing anything important. So would you like to speak to that at all, as far as some content publishers feeling like they’re getting the short end of the stick somehow?
Oh, yeah, of course, and simply was a debated topic from the very beginning. There’s people of both sides who like it hated. And, of course, everything we talked about being able to add call to actions on content that you share. Of course, for the person who publishes the content, how do they feel about that? Well, they’re very divided into two camps, there are people who don’t like call to actions appearing on the page, because they see it as their property, they don’t like the additional traffic. And we actually make it extremely easy to opt out, all you have to do is just submitted requests and your site is opted out.
And so we’re really not when you say that, that means if I were to try to share a link to a particular site that had opted out, it wouldn’t, right, right. And and that’s our stance as a team, we’re not here to, you know, build a product and force it down people’s throats, it’s really, what we believe is that when you incentivize people to share when you give other people a piece of the real estate, they’re much more likely to share your content because they also benefit from sharing links from your articles, which means that if you write really good content, I am now heavily incentivized to share the things that you write.
Because not only do I drive traffic to your content, I also get brand awareness and some conversions could trickle back to me as well. And so the other camp are publishers who loves Snip.ly because they see a real value in incentivize sharing that people are much more likely to share more content share their content, because the the value is now aligned. Before as a content share. I’m not really incentivized to share content, not really, and I don’t really benefit from driving a lot of clicks to your website or your blog. And so a lot of publishers love simply for that the opportunity to align themselves in terms of value proposition be able to drive conversions together. And so there’s there’s that side, but yes, we make it very easy to opt for anyone who’s uncomfortable with what we do.
That is just fantastic. Michael, I really have to congratulate you for your clarity of thought about that. And understanding getting everyone’s incentives and motivation in alignment. And for people who just don’t get it. Well, here’s your opt out. Sorry, sir, I get along, we can agree to disagree.
One thing I want to make very clear, though, is that we use all canonical URLs and flow through settings, which means all the SEO juice goes directly back to the original publisher, it doesn’t interrupt with any of the advertising revenue. So even if I share a link to your page, and it’s simply linked from me, you still have all your ad revenues, all the impression that happens on your page, all the clickers, everything is still yours.
And so everything we do is really to keep in mind always that there’s a delicate balance between the reader and and the reader side is why we have you know, elegantly designed call to action, it’s not pop up, it’s not in your face, it’s not wait five seconds to click through because the reader experience is important and has to be subtle, yet effective. The writer experience the publisher experience, that’s the side where you get all the SEO, you get all the ad revenue. You know, it’s not about taking that away from the publishers.
And then of course, the shares the share gets the brand awareness and the call to action opportunity. So looking at that from the big picture, and being able to balance those three, meant very major parts of the content ecosystem is our priority at Snip.ly. Great, well done. Well done, my friend.
Thank you. Thank you.
Okay, now, I know how I got started using snippets use your built in, you know, viral nature. David is using your free version, which includes a little you know, Snip.ly logo, and I assumed correctly that if I clicked on that little logo, I was going to find out more and find out how I could do what David was doing. So and it worked like crazy. And for example here in this particular case, I then after registering I guess you had an autoresponder sequence that dripped a few emails out on me. And one of them said, you know, what can I do to to help you understand and more better engage with Snip.ly and that’s when I responded to your email and one of the results was this interview.
But it struck me this what a tremendously easy viral marketing system. This was are you doing anything beyond the viral marketing? Or is that sufficient to grow at the rate and scale that you’d like?
Yeah, the built in virality is a big part of how we’ve grown. But it’s definitely not the only thing that we do. One of the things we realized very early on is that Snip.ly is a tool of imagination. As an you know, we as the product builders can’t go out and tell people how it’s supposed to be used, surely, just from observing, we learned so much. And we’re always constantly surprised by the ingenuity of how people use Snip.ly.
So we knew from the get go, that it’s about fostering the community. It’s about you know, what you saw on the YouTube playlist. It’s about getting people to produce content produced guest post blog post a podcasts like this, because it’s, it’s about extracting the individuals idea of what simply is and getting them to share that with their network that we find most effective.
You know, there are there’s an entire community that that that are real estate agents who use Snip.ly to generate leads, because that’s one of their biggest challenges. But I’m not a realtor. And it’d be very difficult for me to ever teach anyone how to use Snip.ly in a real estate setting. But that’s why we foster those communities and engage with the blogging communities and podcast and have other people educate others on what their idea of Snip.ly is and what they can do. And I actually would argue that that part is more or less responsible for getting Snip.ly to all these different verticals, all these different markets.
And even with built in morality, if you don’t follow somebody, you know, if you don’t follow a real estate agent, for example, you’re no matter how viral it is, you’re never going to see that person’s Snip.ly link. So I think built in morality helps us extend within a market, but it’s engaging the community and podcast and bloggers that help us divers diverged into other markets.
That’s great, very wise, I really applaud you for that. You know, you clearly have very high what I call EQ, entrepreneurial IQ. I liken it to emotional intelligence that some people just innately understand things like I have a degree in economics and incentives and and all of this type of thing are central to micro economic theory.
And it seems as though these types of things just appear to you very clearly and naturally, as part of your DNA. So I want to with the time we have left here, transition a little bit away from Snip.ly in particular, and into your entrepreneurial experience in general. And as a tangent point, I wanted to ask you about the funding that Snip.ly. How are you funding Snip.ly right now.
So Snip.ly has been self funded, not self funded as an AI put money in it but self funded as in that it’s been a profitable venture very early on.
That’s awesome.
And I think there’s a lot of entrepreneurs out there that thinks our funding is the only way to go. It’s definitely not. So in fact, if you’re profitable, it’s much easier to secure funding. Oh, of course, it’s like any banks are much more ready to loan money to somebody who doesn’t need it. Yes, yes. And so we as a team decided very early on that if we can’t make money, then there’s no point in raising money.
So we really focused all our efforts on proving whether or not people are willing to pay for it building features that, you know, freemium model being being very, very particular with what we build, and how can each feature prove whether or not this product is worth paying for. And so at the very beginning was much cheaper, you know, we’re charging something like $5 a month just to prove that it’s worth something. And so of course, that’s changed a lot since then.
Now, would you say that you followed the the Lean Startup method?
I think so. I mean, lean startup is very broad, but the way I see it is, if you move fast, and I think moving fast is crucial for startups, then you are you fall under the camp of lean. And so I think moving fast is one of the most important things not just for the startups health, but also personally as an entrepreneur, you know, time is of the essence and being able to prove business ideas, within a few months, rather than a few years could make a significant difference.
Well, one thing in particular, I’m thinking of is like the minimum viable product concept, did you were you ready to release something that wasn’t perfect, but what is least functional and was sufficient to create learning opportunities for you rights and so that what the Lean Startup movement says that the first thing you launch, you should be embarrassed, you should be borderline ashamed of what you’re putting out in the market. And that was definitely true. And, and I’m proud to say that to this day, that’s still true.
You know, when we release features, it’s not ready, it’s almost borderline not ready. But the insights we get is what helps us shape it in the right direction because if you go too far towards Perfection. You never know if you’ve gone in the wrong direction from the beginning. And so we definitely deploy the MVP mentality in everything we do not just in the very beginning, but even now as we deploy new features.
That’s great. Well, we’re running short on time. And there were some other things I wanted to ask you about. Can you quickly go over your previous entrepreneurial experience? Just Yes, thumbnails version.
You know, and we talked about entrepreneurial DNA earlier. And I don’t believe you’re born with entrepreneurial DNA. I think the entrepreneurial DNA is a result of all the failures you’ve experienced during your various attempts at entrepreneurship. So for me, I’ve started many businesses ever since I was really young. You know, you talked about lifestyle and growth businesses I’ve been in both of those situations have found success and failures.
One example I could think of was, you know, I started off as a freelance web designer and just building websites, just like many contractors, and actually expanded that into a lifestyle business when I hired other web designers to help me build those websites, and eventually turn that into a growth business because I introduced basically a SaaS model to web design, allowing small businesses to pay a monthly fee to sustain a website.
And so I’ve been through these various transitions and learn different things, of course, made a tremendous amount of mistakes. And I always, very heavily highlight many, many failures. And I think that’s a part of what helps me make the decisions that I do today is that I would look at a situation and I’d say, Oh, yeah, I had encountered a similar situation. That was the decision that I made, and it was wrong. And so I think experience is very important.
Yes, we could talk about the DNA, you know, the nature versus nurture for another five hours, I would only say in response that some people have a greater affinity and talent that they bring to it than others. But people, including myself, after years and decades of experience, finally start to figure things out if they just stick with it.
It’s a combination for sure.
Yeah. One last thing before we go. And you know, I want to say something very quickly, I am going to create a short overview video of how I see Snip.ly for listeners of Radio Free Enterprise, and that you will be able to access just by registering with the site, and I will send you a link to that video. So I wanted to put that in there. Um, you know, when I when people asked me about how to raise money for venture from I was a CEO of a.com, company 15 years ago, during the.com era, the number one thing I tell them is Don’t do it. Don’t talk to venture capitalists don’t talk to investment bankers. They’re just going to make your life miserable. What would what would you say? In a nutshell to somebody who asked you a similar question?
Yeah, I think, by far, one of the most common mistakes I see is people approach the conversation with what they benefit from the funding. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s how your startup can benefit the VCs portfolio. At the end of the day, they’re not here to do charity work, they’re looking at jobs, that’s an opportunity. And the conversation needs to be framed in that way. It’s how does your startup fit into their portfolio? How does the growth of your startup increase their likelihood of raising their round from their investors so that they can continue to exist as a VC firm? Because I think oftentimes people forget that VC firms don’t have unlimited money VC partners work really hard with investor relations to make sure that their fund stays alive.
And so oftentimes, you really have to question Are you the right fit for their portfolio? And is your growth rate actually going to benefit? The firm that, you know, their investment firm? And I think viewing the relationship in that way actually makes a big difference. And I you know, I could go on hours talking about that. But I think that’s the the summary version of what I like to communicate in terms of first time entrepreneurs pitching VCs.
That’s great advice. Look at it from an effect your customers perspective. Yes. Why would they want to buy you rights rights?
Well, as everything else you shared with just us today, Michael, that is just great stuff. I can’t thank you enough for being here today on Radio Free Enterprise.
Thank you, Frank, it’s been an absolute pleasure.
