The rise of microblogs (Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Rakawa.net, Yammer, ect.) has caused people to think in 140 characters or less. With so much to share it’s difficult to write something of substance that also provides a benefit to your followers. That is if you don’t incorporate the social media strategy of short URL redirection.
Short URL’s put you in control of your content and with some services are completely trackable. What could be a better way to measure the impact of your social media strategy then twittering about a great article you just read and tracking how many people clicked on that link? Powerful stuff that isn’t rocket science.
There are a ton of short url services you probably have never heard of and a few popular short url services. Does it really matter which one you choose? No, but lets refresh on the technology that short URL redirection provides you.
Short URL Services take your thousand character long URL and compacts it down to ten or so characters. Essentially when you import your long URL into one of these services they create an alias that that when you click on the shortened version it directs you to the long URL’s site. This provides you with a link that is easier to remember and write down. Social media is a game changer, but so is short URL redirection services that provide tracking.
When implementing your social media strategy you’ll probably start off as I did in over your head and trying way to many services. Everyone has different tastes and preferences and I have the social media tools that I use. Regardless of what you use you better make sure you can report your progress to the boss. Snipurl has the ability to track all those short URL redirects that you’ve been placing in your social media blasts. Registration is free and provides a very intuitive interface for managing your short URL redirects.
Of course this is just one service and I’ve even heard of people who create their own service giving them exclusive control over their links. Whatever you use, nows the time implement short URL redirects into your social media strategy.
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yes when you are twitting related to some of the site… short URLs can help a lot to save the characters so you can express more in short (140 characters) message.