Know-How Exchange : Other

Dear Cpappas,

Consider using the free URL redirection service offered by tinyurl.com. Copy, paste, and your long URL becomes much shorter.

And it's free!

www.tinyurl.com

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Hi Christina,

I am a big fan of Tweetdeck! Ultimately, you need to stick within the 140-characters allotted or your links will continue to be broken. (Make sure you click on 'shorten' or Tweetdeck will not shorten the link in the 'Shorten URL' window.)

Unfortunately, that means less copy in your tweet if you want to include a link. And even less copy if you want a link plus room for someone to be able to retweet your tweet without changing your content too much.

Here are a couple of other things to consider since you're using Twitter for your company.

Tweetdeck offers shorteners like is.gd, bit.ly, tinyurl, twurl, and tr.im, BUT is.gd and tinyurl do not offer analytics (how many click throughs on your tweets, etc). Analytics are a great way to show management that social media is working (or not) for your company.

Another thing to be careful of is that if you use bit.ly through Tweetdeck, it will not synch up with your bit.ly account and you won't see the analytics (I assume the same is true for the others). So, if you want to manage the analytics, you'll need to use the bit.ly site to shorten your URLs.

I use Cligs.com for my shortener and analytics, but have tested a few of the others out too and will continue to do so until I find something that meets all my needs for social media analytics.

Here's an extensive post on shorteners and analytics that might be helpful: https://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-y...

I hope this helps! If not, let me know...

Beth Harte
Community Manager, MarketingProfs

You can also use the URL shortener Bit.yl - it is just like TInyURL but it also provides tracking analytics for the number of people who click on your link. https://bit.ly

If you want to learn more about Twitter, here is a link to a free webinar, ebook and other materials: https://www.hubspot.com/twitter-marketing-hub/

Hi cpappas,

I'm a huge fan of Twitter, so I'm happy to see your question here. I also really like bit.ly as a URL shortener for the rich analytics it offers. Haven't tried Cligs.com, but I know Beth and others really like it, too.

Just an FYI, probably the best "Twitter 101" how-to tutorial I've seen anywhere is this webinar from the MarketingProfs library, from @joelcomm:

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

https://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/online-seminars/208

If you aren't a paid member, this (free) article also offer a nice how-to overview:

Social Media 101: Use Twitter to Attract Prospects and Engage Customers

https://www.marketingprofs.com/9/use-twitter-to-attract-prospects-engage-cu...

Good luck! See you 'round (and on Twitter!)

Ann
twitter.com/marketingprofs