Branded vs. Generic Shortening Domain: Which One is Best for Your Marketing Efforts
Many spammers are using the free, public URL shortening services. This has led to a conclusion that it is best not to share a short URL via email since it’s the method most spammers use to link phish pages or malware. Not only that but you run the risk of being blocked by the email service if you repeatedly send short URLs via email.
A research study conducted by the security firm Cloudmark found that only 7 percent of the short URLs from Twitter was actually from legitimate URL shortening users. Meaning that 93 percent was spam.
What that statistic says is that any given (public) URL shortening service will likely be abused and at some point develop a bad reputation. Implementing your own Domain URL Shortener using the name of your company or your brand is a confidence booster for users. Another aspect of the Tinycc custom link shortening services is that you can have unlimited customizing of the URL slugs or hashes. It will increase CTR and will show professionalism and seriousness with your online marketing.
The longtime leading platform for short URLs is Twitter because of their former 140 character limit (a limit that has since doubled). Another popular site that has grown in terms of URL shortening tool services is YouTube – mostly on the uploader comments of videos, to show information in documents or external links about the video.
As for now a major challenge of the URL shortening service industry is to strengthen credibility beyond spam and phish payloads. This now might become an uphill battle for the non-branded link shortening tools due to bad reputation built up over a period of years.
Every year the trend is up for the international use of short URL’s. Branded URL Shortening is an excellent tool for online marketing. Not only can you attract more potential clients and more clicks but it also gives you the opportunity to gather valuable marketing statistics about your visitors. Resulting in actionable feedback for improving your next campaign. The use of custom link shortening services is a good option if you are serious about growing your business, reputation and online marketing effectiveness.