Using URL Shorteners In Music Marketing

II’ve noticed that musicians have been embracing URL shorteners somewhat more actively lately. And this is nothing but great! The shorteners are misused regularly as well though, so read on to learn how to do them right.

If you are not sure what I am talking about or don’t quite get why you need to manipulate your links, below is a brief recap of the features you get with URL shortening services like bit.ly, goo.gl, tinyurl.com, ow.ly and the rest:

Image credit: trifactor.co

• The resulted links are short and easy to share. URL shorteners are called so because you can make long messy links short and sweet. It is especially useful on social networks like Twitter, though the latter now has its own tool t.co (which does NOT mean you should stop using other shorteners with Twitter).
• You get the stats. The number of clicks, where they came from, etc. This is really powerful. And if you didn’t know about this little hack, you can see stats for any bit.ly URL by adding a “+” to the end of the link. E.g. this is a link to a post on my personal blog http://bitly.com/PsXHit – but just try http://bitly.com/PsXHit+ in your browser. Voilà!
• It can be more than just a short version of your link. For example, I’m going to try out bre.ad in the nearest future – it shows a splash page (which you set up) for a few seconds before the actual source page is opened.
• You can personalise it. First, Bitly (which is a number one URL shortener our there) and some others allow you to replace the random symbols going after the service’s domain name with your own slug. Second, with Bitly you can use your own domain name instead of bit.ly. This is how a shortened URL for our free ebook looks like: http://dttd.in/10-truths (the domain is supposed to be pronounced as “dotted in”… it was obvious, wasn’t it?)

Don’t mess it up

Bit.ly

And these are couple “misuses” of short URLs that I’ve seen recently. Avoid these mistakes.

• Using short URLs where a normal link is expected. When you were pitching a blogger and included a bit.ly-shortened link to your EPK in the email… Well, it was obvious that you did that to track clicks, since you don’t have to make URLs shorter in emails (unless your links are really bulky). But remember, that a) people don’t like being explicitly tracked, and b) any generic URLs (not including your own domain) engender a bit of mistrust. So if you decide to use a short link to see the stats, at least make it a hyperlink (if you are sending an HTML email) with a relevant anchor text.
• Not customising the URLs. As mentioned earlier, you can make the links look cooler by replacing the slug (what goes after the domain name and “/”). If you create a link for a campaign (not just share a random link on Facebook or Twitter), then do customise it.
• Promoting URL shortener instead of your own site. Now, let me clarify… Of course any short link you create will open a page that you wanted it to open. However, think twice before putting ow.ly/NewAlbum instead of yourbandname.com/NewAlbum on banners, flyers, YouTube videos etc. Yes, your domain name is longer. I would even say it’s half second (oh my!) longer to type. But you always want to promote your domain name, ok? And remember about the common feel of mistrust that URL shorteners cause because of phishers’ love.

Use URL shorteners at your advantage.