The importance of custom short URL’s for curating.

I was scanning through tweets the other day and found that I kept getting drawn to @hnshah’s kiss.ly links. This is the custom link he uses to share stuff on twitter. It got me thinking as to why this was happening... I mean, was I craving a kiss? Was I associating it with keep-it-simple-stupid? What was going on? Why wasn’t I been drawn to other short links too..? Why was I noticing the short link before the profile picture and the text. I realized that it came down to two things:

Scanning

When we read tweets we tend to scan through them. We don’t read every word of every tweet. In fact we sometimes completely skip tweets depending on how our brain is wired that day. Are we reading for pleasure? Are we scanning for tweets from our friends (er, the real ones)? Are we looking for a bit LOL distraction? All these factors influence how we are scanning that day.

In the mornings I tend to read through tweets over coffee. My brain is alert, and I tend to take in a high amount of detail, seeking out interesting industry developments and news. In the evenings it’s the opposite. I’m looking for lighter stuff, replies from friends, and content that requires less thinking.

In most twitter clients links are designed to stand out. They’re highlighted in blue, grey, or other colours. Generally speaking, your eyes will always notice them, even if just in the periphery while scanning.

Quality

The second factor is the ‘perceived’ quality of the stuff that is behind those links. @hnshah is sharing stuff I find interesting most days. Generally, when I click through one of his tweets I will find something interesting to read. This kind of click-through success has a reinforcing effect on the quality I associate with his links. It’s direct - I spot his link, I know his link may contain a goodie. If he was using a normal bit.ly link I’d have to first notice the tweet was from him, then read what it was about, and then decide to check it out. With a known, ‘branded’ link, my brain can take a subconscious shortcut. I spot the link, I know it’s from him already, so I scan the tweet to see if it will interest me and decide to click through. Sometimes I don’t even read the tweet, I just click through. That little link has just eliminated an entire step in the decision process, and pre-loaded a perception of quality before I’ve even viewed the content.

So, do we just rush out and make our own custom links now..? Er, no, please don’t..

Only do it if you feel you can build a sort of ‘brand’ with it. It’s not going to bring much benefit if you only share stuff occasionally, and if what you share is very broad in nature, or frequently low-quality. Each time you use the link you should be rewarding your audience. They won’t mind seeing pictures of your dog occasionally, but unless they’re vet’s they are probably going to lose interest after a while. The general guidance is to share a little bit of light-hearted stuff with a higher amount of good quality stuff. It comes back to the title of this post. Branded links are useful for accounts that curate content, whether that’s your own content or other’s

Picking a name is really easy. Try come up with something that is short, can be said in someone’s head, and identifies with your broader brand. There are so many country domain extensions out there that you can be really creative, and will generally find something that is brandable. As an example, we use wcdy.org for our links. Check out a list of county extensions here.

Then head over to bit.ly, and add the custom domain to your settings. You can do this with their normal free service, and don’t need to pay any extra. You’ll also need to update the domain record with your registrar, but this is usually a quick process, and you can follow the instructions on bit.ly on how to do that.