A common question that we get about Social Media is “How do I send one of those short links on twitter?”
The first answer to this question is that going to Twitter.com will not do the trick. Twitter does not shorten the links for you. You must use some type of link shortner but thank goodness there is no lacking of free options out there. Today we are just going to cover a few of our favorites: TweetDeck, HootSuite and Bit.ly.
I would also like to give an honorable mention for BufferApp. While we are not covering them in this blog post they too will shorten a tweet for you and we love BufferApp. If you have not used it you may want to go give it a try.
Note: In the image above you can see that I posted a link at Twitter.com in the top image and just above you will see the tweet that was actually sent out. Twitter did not shorten the link for me.
The reason that you care about shorten links is because you want to be able to fit in as much text as possible in your tweet. Some links can get quite long and ugly and either be entirely too long all together or take up so much space that you have little room for words to describe your link.
TweetDeck is a great tool for managing your twitter account. You can filter your tweets, schedule tweets and as we are discussing today shorten your links. When you create your TweetDeck account, go to settings and you we will see an option to choose your tweet shortner. I would suggest that you use bit.ly. One of the fun parts about TweetDeck is that when I am using it I feel like I am behind the control deck at a space station but as a result it can be a bit overwhelming at first. However, give it a few minutes and you will love it. More important than the feeling of sending a tweet into space you will find it quick and easy to shorten your tweets.
Hootsuite is without question my favorite Social Media tool. I keep it open always. It is the first tab in tab set in Firefox at all times. Hootsuite makes shortening a tweet extremely simple. When you are typing your tweet you can copy in your link, hit the shrink button and it will follow the tweet right in for you. Another great think about Hootsuite is that they provide great stat tools. However, it is important to note that if you have more than one twitter account to manage you will have to pay $5.99 a month to use hootsuite. It is free for just one account.
Bitly is probably my second favorite Social Media Tool. If you are pre-writing your tweets you will quickly fall in love with Bitly. All that you do is paste your link right on top of the words paste a link here and suddenly a pop up on you screen will appear. Then you just click on the shrunken link that is provide and paste it wherever you want it such as your excel file or tweet. The absolute best part of bitly is the stats. They provide lifetime stats for a link. It will show you how many times a link has been clicked on no matter where you tweeted it or shared it from. This can be quite handy for figuring out what tweets work best with what links.
Social Media is a great place for connecting with your future and current clients but it is also a great place for sharing links to your blog articles, website pages or any other fun thing that you happen to find on the internet. We believe that Twitter is the Heart of Social Media and sharing links to great things in the Digital Sphere is the best way to gain an audience.
Which link shortner do you use? Do you have a preference? Share your experiences with Social Media Sharing.