#WWoW! Keeping Links Short and Sweet by Using Tiny URLs

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Welcome to my weekly post for Writer's Words of Wisdom. For those of you who've stopped in for the very first time, let me explain a little bit about what this is all about. This is a group of writers who decided to get together and share all the little things we've learned in our journey to become published authors. Instead of just posting these to each other, we decided to share these words of wisdom every Wednesday on our blogs. Sometimes you will see multiple posts on the same topic and other times you will find out something brand spanking new. That's the whole point. We want to share what has worked or not worked for each of us so that  those coming after us can pick and choose what works best for them.

Enough of the introduction! On with my post for today. Have you ever wondered how to get those short and sweet clickable URLs that are automatically created for you on Twitter or on Wordpress.com? There are actually many different sites that help you create these space saving links. Some of them even allow you to track statistics such as visitor's countries of origin, return visits, etc.  Some folks love to track that sort of thing. Me? Not so much, but someday I might. LOL If you are interested in that sort of thing, click HERE to take you to a very informative article comparing several different tiny URL generators.

shorter URL's

If you're like me, you just want something short and sweet that doesn't necessarily have all the bells and whistles the others listed in the two articles above. Initially when I was looking for Tiny URLs, I clicked on one of the links done by another author for a promotional post done on Facebook. It took me to tiny.cc


This is also a free site and you can use their tracking features if you wish. What I liked about this one was that it saved my shortened URL's I generated so I could refer to them time and time again. In the section where they're saved, it tells me the number of clicks that were done on this particular link and if any of them were referred from elsewhere. So even without trying, I got some stats! LOL

The most popular one that I've heard folks use is TinyURL.com  It's a free service that allows you to create smaller, easy to copy and paste into emails, blog posts and other social media. You can even install it in your browser tool bar and be able to create a tiny URL for any page you are browsing. Here's what the generator looks like

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

Here is another article comparing the various URL generators just to give you a bit more information about what is the most popular with the techies.

No matter what you're looking for, there is a URL generator just for you. So go on. Give a few of them a try and see which one you like the best.

Make sure you take a few moments and visit the other WWoW members participating this week.

Paloma Beck

Melinda Dozier

Lacey Wolfe

If there is something you'd like to see discussed for future WWoW posts, let me know in the comments section below, or send me a private message. All topics related to publishing, writing, promoting, editing and overall keeping sane during the whole process are up for discussion. I'd love to hear from you!

Until then, brightest blessings to you all today and every day!

~Tammy