Posts Tagged vanity url

Top 5 reasons why t.co is a bad move by Twitter

Posted by Paul Holmes in business, social media on September 2, 2010

Twitter announced, by e-mail to every user, that they are going to make their URL shortener (“wrapper”) mandatory on Twitter, and this will be applied to every URL posted, effectively eliminating the need (and, presumably, the functionality) of every other URL shortener in existence.

Here are 5 reasons why this is a bad policy:

It will put the nail in the coffin for competing shorteners, like bit.ly (which was just starting to look like it had a viable business model). If they go out of business, every Twitter user could be put in the position of having everything they ever tweeted with a bit.ly link become instantly dead.
Twitter vaguely suggested they may offer some analytics tools for shortened links. Fine. Great. But what if I don’t like your analytics? Can I use the other guy who is offering to do better analytics? No.
While not the most unstable country in the world (arguably, Libya may be more so), relying on the goodwill of Colombia for every link on your network is not something I’d be inclined to do.
Shorteners like bit.ly allow people to post to a number of networks, and track link origins, thus aggregating all the activity into one place. Twitter will force people to check two places for analytics, assuming the whole industry is viable at all without allowing their links to be posted on Twitter.
It’s another slap in the face to the developer community. Companies worked within Twitter’s rules to develop some of these great products, like bit.ly and ow.ly. And, in one swoop, Twitter puts them out of business for no apparent reason. This will hurt future development, as it will discourage others to develop add-ons for Twitter for fear of similar treatment. This comes on the heals of the official Twitter iPhone app, which instantly made all the other apps (many of which were far superior, in my opinion) at a serious disadvantage.

Why doesn’t Twitter work with the few viable URL shorteners that are out there, and allow them to implement into Twitter if they meet certain pre-determined criteria?

This would allow Twitter to universally enable features like previewing links, checking for malware, etc., without forcing users to use one style of analytics, and will also allow companies to continue to brand their shortened URLs (like bitly.pro allows you to do).

bit.ly, ow.ly, twitter, url shortener, vanity url

1 Comment

Top 5 Tips For New Facebook Pages

Posted by Paul Holmes in blogging, business, internet, social media on March 22, 2010

1. Make your page title as generic as possible.
If you are setting up a page to promote your company brand, this may not be an option. But generic pages are far more likely to gain fans than brand pages.

Think about it this way – if you have a website about “Travel to Asia”, do you think Facebook users will be more likely to become a fan of “Travel to Asia” or “TravelToAsia.com”?

As much as it pains you, there are far more people who are fans of “Travel to Asia” than there are fans of your website.

In my experience, people are far more likely to share their photos, videos and comments on more generic sounding pages, and more likely to randomly recommend it to their friends.

All this builds a larger community – a community, remember, that you can promote your website and services on.

2. Set up your page properly.
Put an image on your page. Design your page nicely. Through the magic of RSS, import your blog into your Facebook page.

Change the settings so that fan comments appear to everyone, enable comments, videos, photos, and discussion forums!

3. Name your page.
It’s much easier to share your Facebook fan page if you can give a short, concise, and branded URL for it, rather than some ridiculously long address.

Which looks better to you?

If I had $1 for every time I saw a Facebook fan page with over 1,000 fans, but no vanity URL, I’d be rich! It used to be 1,000 fans were what were needed to name a page, then it went down to 100, and now it’s a mere 25 fans! Do you have 25 friends who can fan your page?

Click here to name your Facebook fan page!

Promote your page on Facebook, Twitter and your blog.
Facebook is here to stay. It’s not going away. Get over any concerns you have about losing traffic to it, and take advantage of the community-building tools it has!

Facebook has a little widget you can add to your website to promote your page, it’s called the “fan box”. Click on “Edit Page”, then “Promote with a fan box” (middle column, third section). Here’s what it looks like:

IdeaZone.ca on Facebook

Of course you can link to your Facebook page in a bunch of ways – with a nice Facebook icon, a text link, or with the Meebo Bar.

Advertise your page.
You can advertise your website on Facebook (and I do suggest any serious business considers this). But did you also know you can advertise your page?

My favourite form of advertising on Facebook are fan page ads to “friends of your fans”. If you have 100 fans on your page, there are probably thousands of “friends of your fans”.

Suppose “John Smith” is a fan of your page, “Acme Widgets”. John’s friends will see an ad pop up occasionally showing your “Acme Widgets” page, and saying “John Smith is a fan of Acme Widgets. Become a Fan?” One click, and they’ve signed up!

The old marketing question in this case has gone from “Do I trust Acme Widgets?” to “Do I trust my friend’s positive opinion of Acme Widgets?”

But why would I pay Facebook to advertise Facebook?

First of all, you need to get over the old rules of web marketing – you are not advertising Facebook, you are advertising your brand on Facebook.

There is another big reason: comfort.

The fact is that Facebook users are far more comfortable with Facebook then all those other scary websites in the world! Once a fan becomes comfortable with your fan page, they’ll become far more comfortable with visiting your website.

advertising, branding, facebook, fan pages, vanity url

1 Comment