Thanks to Twitter and its 140 character limit two things have become popular in this tworld: URL shorteners and tweet longer links. My focus is on the ones that shrink your www.IhaveALongSiteName.com/RandomDate/AndASuperLongPostTitle type URLs that extend itself almost to the character limit alone. In order to get interested tweeps to click on your link you need to add a description and some awesome #hashtags as well right? Hence the need for URL shorteners, or is there more to it?

Don’t fret if you’re a twit on how to tiny your tweet. Many times I commonly used tinyurl.com or tiny.cc which served it’s tinying purpose and nothing more. There are other services that provide a little extra if you want to get a more out of your tiny tweet. Sites such as bit.ly offer tracking on how many clicks you get which is a great service to help those up and coming bloggers where we count every click.

Then you think I want something a little more out of my tweets, like a rating system or link it to social networking browsers. Sites such as ow.ly offer a chance to give your blog a thumbs up or thumbs down type rating, share it, tweet it or see other popular tweets that you’ve had by attaching a toolbar at the top of the page. (MonkeyBrewster.com Example) Additionally this service is tied into HootSuite which offers a great way to connect multiple aspects of social networking sites all together under one box. So you can share your new blog post on twitter and Facebook at the same time and you never have to download an application. The problem with this URL shortener is that it’s uses end there if you have high hopes of creating a viral blog post. If this is the case then maybe you need to  digg.com a little deeper. Digg offers a way to share your post with many other people and can not only bring in your tweets and re-tweets by others but random visitors through the Digg network. (MonkeyBrewster.com example) Thus, you are offered the same toolbar style that the previous URL shortener has but added features.

If bringing random people to your site is your aspiration then Stumble Upon is your num to plum. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve wasted stumbling onto random sites just because I was bored. This number seems to grow on the weekends after bars close and I’m spinning to much to sleep. Why not tap into that network and have, wait for it, others stumble onto your site and posts. The su.pr URL shortener offers everything that Digg offers but I believe a larger chance of random visitors stumbling upon your site. (MonkeyBrewster.com Example)

The added bonus to sites last three is that it becomes highly difficult for anyone to share your tweet without reusing the link you provided which could lead to a higher notoriety on your blog post. Also preventing your otherwise super long URL directly from your site being butchered and creating a broken link.

I’m not sure if I would call these tricks of the trade, but they certainly offer an increased opportunity to fling your post further than you ever thought possible by simply shortening up the URL.

Which URL shortener do you use?

___________________________________________________________

Don’t forget to fling this site at others if you like what you see!

Check out one of these related posts

• The Same Red Approach: World AIDS Day

Tags: Facebook, shorteners, tinurl, tweeps, tweets, twit, Twitter, URL