Have you ever noticed that when you’re using your favorite social networks sometimes website links (URL’s) are very long, other times, they are very short? Have you ever wondered how that is done and why? If so, you are like a lot of people who ask me this very questions every week.
Web users shorten website urls for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is because they want to share a much more attractive looking URL and other times it is because they want to know how many people click the link. Other times it is simply to use as few characters as possible so that the link can be easily shared within Twitter’s 140 character restrictions.
What Does a Shortened Link Look Like?
Typically you can spot a shortened URL because it reads a little different than other links. Bit.ly (Pronounced Bit-lee) is a very popular link shortening service and you can spot their links by looking for a bit.ly/ before the rest of the link. Other link shortening services include Google’s shortener Goo.gl, HootSuite’s Ow.ly, and TinyURL.
Most social media management services such as Sprout Social have built-in link shortening.
Why Would You Want To Shorten a Link?
As mentioned above, many people shorten website URL’s because they are trying to trim the amount of characters the URL takes up. Cutting a website link down from 65 characters to 14 can make a big difference to your Twitter convo!
Most of us marketers choose to shorten links so we can see how many people are clicking our links which helps us understand if we are sharing effective content. We get access to that information by signing up for a free account with any of the shortening services above.
Another good reason to shorten your links, it will impress your kids.
Most link shortening services now also have apps to help shorten links you may want to share directly from your phone.