One of my clients was so excited when I told her about tinyurl.com that I thought I'd share why I believe every online business owner needs to take advantage of this fantastic tool.
What is tinyurl?
A url is the website address e.g. www.emma-ward.com takes you to my site. Tinyurl lets you make shorter, customised urls. It looks like this:
Here's 4 reasons why I use it.
1) It shortens the characters of your url
The obvious one - it shortens long urls. When I was an Image Consultant, I had a website called Image Your Image. Rather than telling people to visit a crazy long url like: www.imagineyourimage.com/how-to-wear-a little-black-dress I would tell them to go to tinyurl.com/howtowearLBD and it would instantly direct them.
If you have a really long url, people won't remember it or they'll remember only part of it and then give up when they get to the wrong site. This is NOT what you want when they are clearly interested enough to search for you!
2) It's great for people who don't know you
Sometimes it doesn't actually save a lot of space but I still use it. For example, my free opt-in is called 'Confidence Is The New Black'. It's at www.emma-ward.com/confidenceisthenewblack so www.tinyurl.com/confidenceisthenewblack only saved me TWO characters.
BUT, if people don't know me then they're less likely to remember the emma-ward part. So when I post it on social media or mention the link in a video, they're more likely to remember tinyurl and the title.
3) It means you can grab the url before someone else does.
I have a programme called Love Your Body. I tried to get tinyurl.com/loveyourbody but someone else got there before me. Now whenever I'm creating courses, I grab the tinyurl version as well.
If you have a great title then make sure you get the tinyurl.com version so you are synonymous with the name rather than someone else.
4) You can start to use it to build your brand.
I used to shorten Imagine Your Image to IYI and when I ran events I could have advertised it as something like:
www.tinyurl.com/IYI-Richmond
That's easier to remember and also looks good. You want to start creating memorable urls; you can even link it to a hashtag.
This is great for social media posts like Instagram and Pinterest where you can't add a link to each post as easily but you want to start building a memorable brand.
Bitly.com shortens urls too - you'll need to sign up for an account to customise them but that only takes a few seconds and it's free.
It's great fun. Try it for yourself and let me know how you find it, I love hearing from you.
Emma xx
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