Something that I’ve always considered in light of the literal hundreds of URL Shorteners out there is ‘Brand Awareness’ and how URL Shorteners don’t help.
They are great, I think they are awesome, and with additional metric-gathering capabilities to calculate click-thrus and all that good jazz they are definitely not a terrible nuisance.
But, they don’t provide another avenue for sporting your brand. That’s one of the reasons why when I redesigned ChurchCrunch I created my Twitter buttons to keep my brand intact on Twitter (as you can see by the image it actually shows the .com name).
The point is that it helps others to see the actual domain, know that they are clicking to a legitimate site (not some crazy site), and also get’s my brand out there more.
Well, if that suits you too but you don’t want to go code it yourself you should check out Synected by Blurbia, a nice little WordPress plugin that does all that work for you.
In fact, it looks so good I’m thinking about using it myself:
Synected enables shortened URL creation on your own blog. Rather than relying on services such as tinyurl.com or bit.ly, Synected lets you easily create and use short links based off your own domain.
This releases you from dependence on a third party — a server error on tinyurl no longer prevents visitors from reaching your site.
In addition, it strengthens your brand, keeping your domain name in view of your audience even on Twitter and other micro-communication platforms.
Good stuff.
What are you doing to keep up your Brand Awareness and having it grow?