To Shorten or Not To Shorten?

Can you guess what this post is going to be about by reading the post title? If you guessed URL shorteners, you are correct!

URL shorteners have been around for many years. For those who don’t know what a URL shortener is, it is basically a tool that allows users to shrink long URLs into short and neat URLs. In the past, these shorteners were mainly used to compress long URLs so that the links can fit neatly in emails or chat programs.

However, with the rise of Twitter and it’s 140 character post limit, these URL shorteners are again drumming up some attention. There are arguments about why URL shorteners are bad and others that highlight why URL shorteners are useful. In the end, the answer to the question, “To Shorten or Not To Shorten?” is, it depends (the infamous answer).

If we take Twitter’s 140 character limit as the example, the first question you need to ask yourself when posting a link is, “Do I have to shorten the original URL?”

You’re immediate answer might be, “Of course I do, there’s hardly any room for my message to begin with!”

An interesting point is that we often have to write a message to give our audience context and explain what the “shortened” link is about. Your audience would probably not click on a tweet with a single shortened URL like, http://short.com/xyz because their first reaction would be, “It’s spam, no it’s a virus, no it’s a monster waiting to eat my computer!”

By using a shortened URL, you are also eliminating an important element of your company and/or website, brand awareness. When you first registered your company domain name, you probably spent hours trying to think of and purchase that perfect domain name that will represent the company. And now, wouldn’t it seem a bit foolish to zap that perfect domain name into oblivion with a shortener? Each tweet or RT you receive is a missed opportunity to increase the brand awareness of your company domain – a vital representation of your brand. (Can you image if all links to facebook.com became http://short.com/xyz?)

The next question you’ll likely ask is, “But how can I tweet a link if the link itself is over 140 characters long?”

If you are publishing content on a blog, for example, you will need to take into consideration the URL structure. URL structure touches upon SEO, which is beyond the focus of this post, but for simplicity, the URL for each post should be short, simple and use a readable slug. For example, a good URL would be www.company.com/blog/why-url-shorteners-good-bad. This URL is 48 characters long (well below the Twitter limit), it adds to the company’s brand awareness and uses a slug that is a good description of what the webpage is about. With really good slugs, the need for a long descriptive message is reduced.

Of course, if you do not have control of the link you are tweeting about, then you cannot change the URL structure. Then again, you wouldn’t be concerned about increasing someone else’s brand awareness anyway.

So, as always, it depends and if you find yourself in a situation where you need a URL shortener, there are plenty out there!

A list from www.friendbeef.com

A list from Mashables.com

And another list from Singlefunction.com

Finally, if you don’t like those, make your own!
http://urlshort.sourceforge.net/ – if you can program
http://totally.awe.sm/ – if you can’t program

Cheers,

Victor
eMarketing Strategiest

Tags: 140 characters, brand awareness, Social Media, Twitter, url shortener