by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media
Tiny URLs are everywhere you look. You see bit.ly, ow.ly and is.gd. Typically, short URLs contain random numbers and letters (both lower and upper-case). What you do not see much are businesses taking advantage of the custom option, where instead of just having random numbers and characters, a keyword or phrase can bee added to the end of the link. Doing this provides a huge opportunity to stand out among the sea of small, indecipherable links.
By custominzing these tiny URLs, you can accomplish two goals. First, it will provide immediate information to the end user. They know what to expect before clicking the link and actual words have a way of drawing the eye to a link. Second, you build trust and a sense of professionalism with users. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is the looming SPAM and security threat of small links - you never know what you are going to get and that poses a problem. It takes just one bad experience to feed this distrust and fear, especially when it comes to social media.
If you really want to create a branded experience, consider hosting a URL-shortening service branded specifically for your business. Some companies offering this include Yourls (http://yourls.org), Shorty (http://get-shorty.com) and Awe.smly.awe.sm) (http://total. From these sites instead of a link like http://tinyurl.com/X36npZ, you can use http://yourdomain.com/product.
Next week we will look at how to reel in big fish to help you promote your company.
Tiny URLs are everywhere you look. You see bit.ly, ow.ly and is.gd. Typically, short URLs contain random numbers and letters (both lower and upper-case). What you do not see much are businesses taking advantage of the custom option, where instead of just having random numbers and characters, a keyword or phrase can bee added to the end of the link. Doing this provides a huge opportunity to stand out among the sea of small, indecipherable links.
By custominzing these tiny URLs, you can accomplish two goals. First, it will provide immediate information to the end user. They know what to expect before clicking the link and actual words have a way of drawing the eye to a link. Second, you build trust and a sense of professionalism with users. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is the looming SPAM and security threat of small links - you never know what you are going to get and that poses a problem. It takes just one bad experience to feed this distrust and fear, especially when it comes to social media.
If you really want to create a branded experience, consider hosting a URL-shortening service branded specifically for your business. Some companies offering this include Yourls (http://yourls.org), Shorty (http://get-shorty.com) and Awe.smly.awe.sm) (http://total. From these sites instead of a link like http://tinyurl.com/X36npZ, you can use http://yourdomain.com/product.
Next week we will look at how to reel in big fish to help you promote your company.
