Friday, January 29, 2010

Use Tiny URLs Strategically

I'm sure you're familiar with Tiny URLs. You go to http://tinyurl.com, enter any web address, and it returns a very short redirect URL that brings up your much longer location. For example: http://tinyurl.com/yf7t292.

One of the coolest features is one that I rarely see used. Instead of the random location (/yf7t292) you can request a specific address. If it's available, it's yours permanently.

Obviously, this is very handy for URLs that you use multiple times when posting to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Tiny URLs are also great on PowerPoint slides -- especially if they're customized.

For example, here are some custom Tiny URLs I have registered:

http://tinyurl.com/cloudsr
This goes to the Cloud Services Roundtable free public broadcasts page.

http://tinyurl.com/sactech
This is a client-facing meetup.com site for KPEnterprises.

http://tinyurl.com/sacspeak
A shortcut to the Sacramento Speakers Network, a group of successful speakers who meet every month.

http://tinyurl.com/kpe2010
Points to KPEenterprises.com (Sacramento's premier Microsoft certified Small Business Specialist), the consulting business I run.

http://tinyurl.com/smbemail
Points to the email sign-up page for Great Little Book / SMBBooks.com. When I encourage people to sign up for my weekly consulting email, this is the URL I use.

http://tinyurl.com/smbquiz
I did a Twitter-based contest in December and created this URL for that. Note that this one is very reusable. Because the URL says quiz and the landing page actually says quiz, I can reuse this for any quiz I happen to put up.

http://tinyurl.com/cdsample
Points to a specific blog post about ordering a free copy of the SMB Books sampler CD.

http://tinyurl.com/sacsmb
Points to our user group, the Sacramento SMB IT Professionals.

http://tinyurl.com/smbnew
Points to the "What's New" page at SMBBooks.com.

- - - - -
Blog Fodder

Whether it's for the SMB consulting community or your end-user client audience, I hope you have a folder somewhere with Blog Fodder. That's what I call all the clippings and notes and stuff that I might some day blog about.

I keep a small file there called !Tiny URLs.txt. It lists all the reusable Tiny URLs I've created over the years. It starts with ! so it's at the top of the file listing and makes it very easy for me to copy and paste these URLs into Twitter, etc.

As you can see, it's pretty easy to create your customized Tiny URLs. I've been very pleased with how many are available. Apparently, not many people use this feature or my life would be a lot more difficult.

Try it.

:-)



Now Available:
Win a free pass to the SMB VOIP Conference
Las Vegas March 1-3
Compliments of SMB Books.
Free to enter. Join me in Vegas, Baby!

4 comments:

  1. The genius that is Karl comes through - again! What a great tip. Thanks for sharing this with us.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Bob. Owe you that beer.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Karl, I have heard that some Content Filtering devices such as SonicWALL are filtering TinyURL and the others like ow.ly and bit.ly. Shifting gears now to my SEO business, I do like the use of smaller SEO optimized URLs for business. Good ideas and something I use all the time.

    Cheers

    Stuart Crawford
    ULISTIC Inc.
    http://www.ulistic.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Karl - great tip.

    Do you use services such as bit.ly - which allow you to track click-thru's on TinyURLs?

    Sadly it appears bit.ly don't allow Custom URL's as TinyURL currently do - but I'm sure there are alternatives to bit.ly out there...

    ReplyDelete

Feedback Welcome

Please note, however, that spam will be deleted, as will abusive posts.

Disagreements welcome!