Short Tips to Success-Short Tips to Success-

This week's tip gives you a couple options for shortening links and determining how successful those links are in helping you get the word out about your website or business. But first...

Link Twitter to Facebook (so your Twitter posts will go to Facebook as well)

First of all, from our earlier Tips and articles you should know that we highly recommend posting messages (tweets) on Twitter.  Also, if you link these tweets to your Facebook account (which we also highly recommend) then you get twice the "bang for the buck" from your tweets, since every tweet will also be posted on Facebook as well.

Now that Twitter's linked to your Facebook account you can easily post to Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.

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How to Shorten Website Links in your Twitter posts and get Statistics as well

Now for the "power tip": When shortening the web addresses (links) you use in Twitter tweets you can also view statistics to see how many people clicked on your links.

There are two powerful and different ways to do this:

1) Bit.ly: By registering and logging into a free account at Bit.ly.


2) Su.pr: By registering for no-fee Stumbleupon.com (social bookmarking site) account and then logging into a no-charge Su.pr account.


The strategy for both of these is the same: Shorten the URL (web address) then write the text of your tweet in front of it.

Example:

Shortened link:
http://su.pr/ADlFna

Su.pr post:
2009 Dig Report: Social network, micro/blogging skills 3 most important social media comm skills for job seekers 2 have: http://su.pr/ADlFna








Link to Statistics for Su.pr Example


Karl's still testing these, but so far has positive feelings about both services which shorten URLs (web addresses) and automatically post to your Twitter account (and to Facebook as well, since your Twitter account can be linked to your Facebook account, as mentioned above).

However Su.pr has the added "zing" with its claim that your site can attract "More Traffic: Su.pr is the only URL shortener that also helps your content get discovered! Every Su.pr URL exposes your content to StumbleUpon's nearly 8 million users!"

The other major difference is that the shortened links from Bit.ly go directly to the original web pages when clicked and the Su.pr links take you to an Su.pr page showing the desired web page (within the Su.pr page/site).  Only time will tell which method/site users prefer.

You can use many other URL shortening services, but these give you feedback on how many people are clicking on your links, so it's a view into how many people are seeing/reading/acting-on your tweets.

Try either/both and see what you think, then let us know by commenting at the link below.

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YouTube Video of Shortening Links for Twitter using SnipURL - another shortening service
- Why short links are important: Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters.


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IOP Tweets of the Week



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