2010 14/01

Get Your Own Twitter Friendly Links

By Erica
View Comments com
Filed in: Blogging, Reviews, Twitter, Wordpress

We’ve all gotten Twitter spam. We see hundreds of tweets a day with links in them and we have no idea where those links lead. URL shorteners are helpful, as they allow you to create a tweet with more content, and less link. But, they make our links look like everyone else’s…

If you have a fairly short URL, or could register a shorter version of your current domain, you could have your own shortened url’s for Twitter!

For me, being able to shorten a link like this:

http://www.ericasays.com/1876/ask-aardvark-your-questions/

Into this:

http://ericasays.com/1876

is quite helpful. No, it’s not as short as some of the url’s you’ll see on Twitter, but, it’s branded and people know where they’re going when they click that link.

How do you get this?

Simply install the Twitter Friendly Links plugin for WordPress. It’s free, and very easy to use. I had this set up within a couple of minutes, then was pleasantly surprised to come back to my post editor later and find a new box labeled Twitter Stuff which will display the shortened link for you!

Hesham @ FamousBloggers

Nice idea, branding your links.. but don't forget that Twitter is no follow! by the way I love your new theme! bright!
EricaMueller

Thanks for the tip and reminder, Hesham! And, for your kind words about my new design!
Eric

I just installed this and not really sure how to use it actually but I'm curious to find out more.

I really like the fact that it's a brand of your personal site address. That's cool.
EricaMueller

Go to Settings/Twitter Friendly Links for the settings. Enter your URL. (I leave off the WWW. to make it shorter) and make sure the format is Generic (numbers only). If you're using a sharing program like Twitter Tools, Tweet-This or Sociable, check the appropriate box, and walla!
opinionated ant

Whoops! I hit the like instead of reply button (but I like it too ;) my main site is probably too long for twitter but I think it is a great idea.

I use hootsuite's ow.ly but I've heard that it doesn't work on all twitter apps. Worth checking out. Thanks for sharing.
EricaMueller

Hey, 'like' is good too! :-)

Glad you enjoyed it.
Firas Steitiyeh

Cool plugin Erica, Thank you :D

I am downloading it right now! I agree that it is good for branding, really good actually!
EricaMueller

Let me know how ya like it! You have a url short enough to use it. :-)
Rhys

I can certainly see the benefit in it! The only thing is, what happens if you call a post 1915? :P
Chris H

I use the su.pr plugin for Wordpress, which also offers short URLs using my domain as the base - just another option for doing much the same thing :)
EricaMueller

Cool. Another plugin to check out. haha I don't remember where I came across the one I'm using, but I do know I'd been seeing branded short url's for some time and figured this is what they were using. Shows how much looking around I did (or didn't!)
Mike CJ

Grrrr! Wonder if there's a Drupal version. Wordpres! Pah! :)
EricaMueller

I know nothing about Drupal. Does it have plugins like WP does? If there is no plugin for this functionality, commission one to be made and sell it!!!
grahunt

Told you to go WP Mike.
Meanwhile try Pretty Links which is another excellent WP Plugin. One of my blogs comes out too long eg www.houses-for-sale-in-spain.net/thisblog because the url is long. Ericasays.com is obviously a lot better for Twitter. I find bit.ly is good because it is trackable as regards looks and clicks
EricaMueller

Graham,

I've tried a bit.ly a few times, with various plugins and was never able to get it working correctly. Now that I can brand my urls I doubt I'd switch back, but you're right, for people with a long domain this plugin won't help them much! haha
Mike CJ

I am using it now on two sites, but not nearly as customisable as Drupal. Great for blogging, but not more.
EricaMueller

Mike, I think the "Great for blogging, but not more" idea of Wordpress has a lot of people looking elsewhere. The trick is knowing how to use WP. My husband is a professional web developer who has switched to using WP almost exclusively for it's content management capabilities. Many of the sites he creates don't even have a blog.

WP is HIGHLY customizable, you just have to know how, and not many people do.
Jimi Jones

I like the idea of a branded link and this plugin seems simple enough to use. I usually edit my post links to include a keyword. Does this provide any stats? Just wondering.
EricaMueller

No stats related to the plugin, however I do see in my regular stats were people are coming from Twitter, so I know the visits are still being counted.

I have longer, keyword optimized urls for my blog, it's just the short urls this pushes to twitter that are shortened using only the post id
Jimi Jones

Coolness! Thanks for that feedback. Anything we can do to help establish your brand is a plus for sure.
Antti Kokkonen

If the plugin uses PHP for the redirect it'll eat resources if the shorturl gets a lot of hits. Not sure of course as I haven't tested it. I've done my short links with .htaccess rule. As the WordPress default ?p=123 permalink is always "in use" even when actual permalink is using %postname% or such, it's relatively simple rule to the .htaccess file.
EricaMueller

I'm a little lost when you start talking about editing .htaccess files, but what else is new? haha

I see what you mean tho. Yes, using the standard ?p=123 permalink structure for tweeted posts is shorter than the full url, but what i like about this plugin is it gets rid of the ?p=. That's 3 more characters, gone! :-)
Antti Kokkonen

Right-o, can't hide the fact I geek-it every chance I get :) The .htaccess rule does the same, as it redirects example.com/123 into example/?p=123 (which then goes into whatever permalink one is using).