Back in the day, when you wanted to share the web address of your fab Paris vacation with someone, you’d have to type up the entire URL or copy and paste it into an email before barraging your friends and family (and the world) with pictures of you wearing a beret in front of the [insert famous Parisian landmark here].
If you’re not careful, of course, when you ask your BFF Debbie if she had a chance to see your pics of the tres magnifique croissant you had for breakfast every morning, she might look at you blankly and say the link didn’t work.
The easiest way around this is to use a URL shortener. La petite url not only condenses long URLs, it also uses your domain name so each shortened url is personalized. So instead of http://shorturl/1928ydi you can get http://yourdomain/yourpage. This application is great for blogging, tweeting or just about anything! (If you don’t want to install la petite url on your blog, you can use the edit permalink on WordPress as well.) It replaces the long string of letters and numbers with a shorter, 5-letter combination after your domain name so URL like:
http://www.october17media.com/you/paris/2009/june/breakfastwasyummy.html
becomes:
http://www.october17media.com/ujmht
The problem with long URLs is that you can make a mistake, the link can get broken in an email, or it may be too long for an sms or for Twitter. Maybe you didn’t select the entire URL or you may accidentally cut off the address. You could always read it over the phone to your tech-challenged mother, but having to read http://www.october17media.com/mystuff/1098?912.html to anyone doesn’t seem like much fun.
But why would you need to use your own domain, when other services seem perfectly fine? Like any good marketer will tell you, branding is key here. You put your logo all over your stationery, brochures and around your office, so why not your own shortened URL? This ensures your brand stays at the top of your clients’ minds at all time. For example, if you tweet an update to your page, your clients will immediately know that the link is coming from your company.
Speaking of which, this is another added bonus to having a personalized shortened URL – your customers can easily identify any link you send them as authentic and not spam or malware.
If you’d like to get your hands on this app, get a wordpress blog or even learn more about it, contact us [via emailing us here]. We can get this installed on your website today!
Now if only they’d invent something to make vacation pictures less boring…
Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Branding, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Online Marketing Strategy, Optimization, Self Promotion, SEO, Social Media, Twitter, Web Performance
