Читать книгу Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies - Michelle Krasniak - Страница 90

Long, descriptive URLs that are useful for search engines are also messy in email, text messages, text versions of e-newsletters, and blogs, and make it difficult to retweet within the character limits of some social-networking platforms. The solution is to snip, clip, nip, trim, shave, or otherwise shorten ungainly URLs with a truncating service. Take your choice of those in Table 1-2 or search for others.

The downside is that the true owner of shortened URLs may be a mystery, so it doesn’t do much for your branding unless you select the option to create a custom URL. Figure 1-1 shows a typical URL truncating service and the result.

As always, enter the name of your URL-snipping service on your Social Media Marketing Plan. To make it easier to track URLs and their snipped versions, select just one service.

TABLE 1-2 URL-Snipping Services

Service Name	URL	Notes
Bitly	https://bitly.com	Free and paid versions, with history, stats, and preferences
Ow.ly	http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url	Hootsuite’s URL shortener, free
Hootsuite blog	https://blog.hootsuite.com/what-are-url-shorteners	12 of the Best Link Shorteners That Aren’t the Google URL Shortener
TinyURL	http://tinyurl.com	One of the oldest and best-known truncators, free
Rebrandly	www.rebrandly.com	Free and paid versions to share and track custom domain name URLs
2 Create a Website	http://blog.2createawebsite.com/2012/01/09/popular-url-shorteners-for-redirecting-tracking-affiliate-links	Comparison review article

FIGURE 1-1: Enter a long URL at Bitly and receive a shortened URL in return.