2 Benefits of Using a URL Shortener
Ever want to share a post on social media and you go to cut the link to share it and it ends up being 100 characters long? Your post ends up looking really long, like this:
“Find out how to use Twitter to expand your reach in this post from @tapounder – http://ymsidekick.com/2019/02/19/how-t0-use-twitter/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare”
Now, this isn’t an actual link but I think we’ve all seen these loooooooooooong links before.
While the link does it’s job and connect this person with the right site, it doesn’t exactly look very pleasing on your social media account. So how do you eliminate it? You use a URL shortener.
Here are 2 reasons why you should take the extra step and use a URL shortener for your ministry when you share on social media.
It’s Clean. Instead of attaching a super long URL to your post you are sharing, a shortener makes that link much smaller and it looks cleaner when you share.
You can track it. Analytics are key to finding out how effective your social posts are doing. When you use a URL shortener it will be able to track how many clicks that particular link is getting in one centralized location. Sure Facebook and Twitter give you analytics but you have to go to each site and look at the analytics. With a URL shortener like Bitly, you can track their link’s effectiveness in one centralize location.
Ultimately, having shorter links is a cosmetic change that allows you to track their effectiveness. Do you 100% need to have it? No. But if you want a clean looking tweet or post that you are able to track how many people are clicking on it from where, it is a great tool to have in our social media tool box. There are a variety of companies that offer this service and a lot of them for free which is always nice. If you are not currently using one, try one out with Bitly or Hootsuite and see how effective your posts are.
What do you think? Do you use a URL shortener? Why or why not? What benefits do you get from it? Share your experiences below or on social media using #ymsidekick when you share.
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