3 URL Shorteners To Improve Sharing and Measurement

URL shorteners are one of the things that many people sharing information on the web overlook. They try to send long URL’s within their social networks and many times the end up getting broken.  The bigger issue is that the majority of people using social media are missing a huge opportunity to understand what their community likes and how information spreads.

If people use URL shorteners they often just use the one built into the Web service they are using. Stop that right now!!!

Taking Your Sharing To the Next level:
The three shorteners I share with you in this post are all very similar and I recommend you pick the one that works best for you. Regardless of which one you use their are a couple of reasons you NEED to use a URL shortener for every link you share.

Statistics:
The web is often obsession with the term “Viral” everyone wants their information to spread across the web resulting in a gazillion page views. Regardless if you goal is viral or not, your goal should be to share information that is relevant and interesting to your community. How do you know this (especially if it is not your content)? URL stats are a game changer when it come to how you share your information. Here is an example of stats from a URL I shared using Bit.ly:

Do you see the value in having this information? You can compare URLs that you share by popularity to see what your community is most interested in. You can see how much traffic is being driven by each social network and it lets you see what other networks people are sharing the link on.  If you are a business using social media it lets you show and understand what information is relevant and how much interest your actions are generating.  This is game changing information folks, use it!

Vanity URLs:
One of the killer features on zi.ma is the ability to have custom vanity URLs. One problem with shortened URLs is that sometimes people don’t click on them, because they don’t know where they are pointing to. By creating a vanity shortened URL you can change a random URL like  zi.ma/1mX34 to one that looks like this zi.ma/kippsblog which gives people an idea of the site they are about to visit.  Give people an idea of what is coming makes them more likely to visit the page you are sharing.

Here are my three favorite URL Shortener’s on the Web:

Zi.ma – Zi.ma was developed by Martin Bowling, who is a brilliant and helpful person which is reason enough to use it.  Zi.ma touts these as it killer features:

• easy to handle your long URLs;
• redirect statistics – your visitors’ referer domain, referer page, visitor’s IP (+ link to geographical information about each visitor), date;
• set temporary download links and protect them with password.
• bulk URL shortening
• Vanity URLs http://zi.ma/islovedbymillions
• IP Address + Forms Based authentication – get redirect statistics without logging in
• awesomely cool domain name
• 301 Redirects – You get all the link love!.

Bit.ly - Bit.ly has many of the same features as zi.ma. Its killer feature is that it tracks all links to a URL even if it is from another URL shortening service. The also have a great Firefox extention which shows you the stats for any shortened URL within Firefox.

idek.net – Develop by Adam Covati idek.net provides very rich stat information that rivals bit.ly and zi.ma along with and dead simple interface.

All three services have bookmarklets for your web browser that makes shortening a URL as simple as a click!