Comments on: Twitter Tip: A more effective way of tweeting links and URL’s

By: Study Business Courses

Study Business Courses — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:52:03 +0000

Great lesson John. One thing that’s missed here though is the volume of tweets that could potentially be inbound links to the user’s own domain are unfortuntately wasted domain and page ranking opportunities because they link to a different domain (the tiny url domain). It’s better to implement a short url/lookup system on your own domain to implement better metrics.

One thing i’ve noticed is that twitter shortens posts with dashes or underscores, but is more forgiving with long urls with single word segments … ie: “http://www.business.curtin.edu.au/business/future-students/bachelor-of-commerce/what-s-uni-like/student-stories” will get shortened in a flash whereas “http://www.business.curtin.edu.au/business/future/students/bachelor/of/commerce/whats/uni/like/student/stories” comes through with flying colours.

By: John Bollwitt

John Bollwitt — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:07:42 +0000

That’s a good point, Leo. Interesting to note, WordTwit does have the ability to make short URLs out of your domain name. I’m not sure how the mechanics work, but do check it out if your interested to know more.

By: Leo

Leo — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:31:03 +0000

John, thanks again on your tip about including the “http://” on its apparently universal understanding by 3rd party apps. I also got to thinking if there is a way to host one’s own “TinyURL” or “Bit.ly” like services? I mean, I don’t want to be dependent on their services ‘forever’. Also, each time we use these services it’s one less chance to brand our own site, as well as, any possible future creative applications when we are in control. Time too Google and see what’s out there.

By: Monica

Monica — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:15:31 +0000

Great post John. In fact, you can get any RSS feed streaming into your Twitter and auto-tweeting. I really like TwitterFeed because it’s simple.

By: Rob J

Rob J — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:46:31 +0000

A URL shortener that I use is http://kl.am which allows you to easily view the analytics of each link, specifically how many clicks that link gets. It’s really useful to have that kind of information as you can imagine. I just wish the WP plug-in I have which posts tweets after a blog post is published would automatically shorten the URLs.

Cheers for the post.

By: Kathleen Rake

Kathleen Rake — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:36:45 +0000

Thanks for making this easy for me to understand. I appreciate it!

Cheers!

Kathleen

By: Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:04:13 +0000

This is a great post, John. I’m constantly trying to explain this to people and now I can just refer them here.
I gave up using www. long ago simply because I felt it was just not worth it anymore.

By: Duane Storey

Duane Storey — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:50:38 +0000

AND BOOM!

Part of the problem is that sometimes Twitter will turn a full URL into a TinyURL, and sometimes it just cuts it off. I wish it were all or something, because it’s confusing behaviour.

Also, adding the http to links is something Twitter should probably do under the hood. It’s good for users to do it, and good for some third party apps to make them clickable, but if Twitter made a small change it would work for everyone.

By: Stephanie Nairn

Stephanie Nairn — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:03:18 +0000

John,
Thanks for including @CTVOlympics. Bit.ly was recommended to us because it also records metrics for the Bit.ly links we post, including clicks and re-tweets.