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3 Quick Tips For Using URL Shorteners

If you're new to the world of shortened links and wondered what good URL shorteners are, read on. You'll be pleasantly surprised at the ease and utility of the free online tools.

Beyond reclaiming a fistful of those precious few 140 characters in a Twitter post, link shorteners - or "URL shorteners" - are ideal from providing you nearly real-time data as well as historical data giving you insight to the progress of your online visibility and marketing success.

Here are a 3 quick tips for using link shorteners:

1. Use It Or Lose It
   It might sound obvious, but use short links. Use them in social media marketing like Facebook and LinkedIn. Use them in your Tweets on Twitter, your tumbles on Tumblr and your posts on Posterous. They're nice, organic inbound links to your content, and organic inbound links are good for search engine ranking.

2. Get It Good
   'Getting' something is half the battle, right? Understanding the impact on users is key. User appreciate having short links that are easy on the eyes and easy to share.

3. Add It All Up
   The plus marks the spot! It's easy to track the click and related online activity information. Both bit.ly and goo.gl support giving you a shortened URL's related information - such as number of clicks, where the clicks came from, and  lots more - by simply placing a '+' character after a link shortened using their services. Here's an example: If you used Google's shortener - goo.gl -  and your link is something like "http://goo.gl/a98m0,"simply place a '+' at the end of the shortened link in the address bar of your browser and hit the 'Enter' key. Your link's details will load up and you'll have insight into how the link's stacking up.

Do you use short links? How useful do you find them? What do you use them for? Feel free to share any tips on using short links here.

Email Marketing Simply Works

From a recent report on direct marketing, published annually by the Direct Marketing Association:  "Commercial e-mail returned a whopping $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, according to the DMA.."

Small and micro-businesses will more fully embrace and implement email marketing or continue to wonder why their business and revenues are slowly eroding, even after the economy truly begins to rebound.  It's not hard, it's just somehow 'too new'.  But not really.  If you take time to dash off a note to family or friends, share a recipe or a tip on a great vacation spot, you can send marketing emails for your business.  The tools to do it have really matured (drop dead super easy), and the pricing has become truly competitive (damn near free).

I've been saying it for years, but as larger businesses become more proficient at 'feeling smaller', they're going to continue to eat entire customer bases of small businesses.  Why? They're segmenting to the niche.  So where a small business has traditionally had an advantage in being nimble and able to implement high touch, high impact marketing efforts to niche markets and their core customers more quickly than their larger competitors, those days are over.  Gone are the days of marathon monthly meetings for larger businesses' niche marketing launches.  Remember: segmenting to the niche means seizing the opportunities and acting, not meeting.

So don't get stuck in the meeting rut.  There are lots of blow-hard consultants who're well-practiced pied pipers, pontificating on their profound planning prowess.  Skip it.  You know your business.  You know your customers.  You know that you should reach them and retain their loyalty by emailing them your  professionally crafted compelling content.  So do it.  If you need to hire someone to set it up, do it.  Every buck you spend on it should return you around $40, so get cracking.

Need some tips?  Here  are a few practical ones:

• Start simple, stay simple: no need to add a lot of blinking pictures.
• Keep things brief, creative and to the point; can be creative without wasting space.
• Nice and clean; have a nice, pleasing, easy to consume layout.
• Be sure to put contact information in there; standard footer content, nice as a header element, too.
• Be specific about the call-to-actions; the 'click heres' and 'act nows' should be utterly obvious about what you want.
• Use professional tools to do it (I've built my own, and used services; trust me, way better than using the BCC field in Outlook or Gmail)
• Keep a lid on it: use services that are the most cost effective and simple to use.
• Recommendation: MailChimp; has a Free Forever plan for sending small to small lists (up to 500 recipients at a time), very easy to use.
• Recommendation: StreamSend; extremely reasonble, 30-day free trial, hassle-free and easy to get going.  They're awesome folks, too! (Hi, Becky!
• Test it out with a pro; get feedback, take constructive criticism and then let it fly!  Feel free to hit me up, if you like. My email designs and copywriting have garnered some of the industry's highest click-through and customer conversion rates.  And it'll take me mere minutes curse or bless your efforts. Just kidding.  I'll give you solid feedback and tips, if you like.
• Be real and have fun!  Your marketing communications should have an easy, distinctive voice, and you should have fun getting the content together, whether or not you're the one actually managing the marketing campaigns.

As always, I'm here to help, so like I said, feel free to tap me for any information or assistance you may need.

- M