One of our newest Wordpress clients, Pilates Body NYC, asked me recently, “How did you do http://bit.ly/dr0Zt6 instead of my site address. Does it matter? Am I making sense?”

I had Tweeted about her new website/blog, and used the shortened link she referenced, instead of her actual web address: http:pilatesbodynyc.com/.

I recommend everyone who uses social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogging, etc.) for any kind of marketing register for a free account at bit.ly. Here’s why:

1) Updates on social media sites are always limited by number of characters.

Twitter only allows 140 characters, and if you hope to have your Tweets “retweeted” or “shared” (a goal you should have, for a lot of reasons I won’t get into here), the rule of thumb is to use no more than 120 characters in a Tweet. Shortening your links using bit.ly gives you more room.

For example, if I use our Twitter to point people to our blog post “The Small Business Triple Threat: Relationship Skills, Blogging, and Social Media” using the original url (http://qwebconsulting.com/website-tips/the-small-business-triple-threat-relationship-skills-blogging-and-social-media/), I’m using nearly 100 characters.

Using bit.ly to shorten and customize the link, I use http://bit.ly/TripThreat, just 24 characters.

Now I have a lot more room to build a headline that will [hopefully] get people to click my link and go to our blog.

2) If you use bit.ly’s website to shorten your links, then copy and paste them into your social media profiles and blogs, you can keep track of how many clicks your links get.

Why do you care? Because for an effective social media strategy, you need to know whether or not anyone cares about what you’re sharing, especially if you’re using social media trying to drive traffic to your website, blog, or other sales vehicles.

If you’re not getting any clicks — or you’re only getting a few — you need to make some changes in strategy so you’re not wasting time.

3) Bit.ly allows you to customize your shortened links to make them more appealing to click on.

For example, the shortened link we use to send people to New England Multimedia’s Facebook is http://bit.ly/newengfb. I use the same link every time, because it’s easy for me to remember. The letters I’ve used give the reader a clue as to what they’re about to click on, AND as I shared in #2, my new link is a heck of a lot shorter than http://facebook.com/newenglandmultimedia.

See how that works?

I’ve also found that when I just use the shortened link bit.ly gives me, without customizing it, I get fewer clicks. The jumble of letters and numbers bit.ly uses isn’t very appealing. I don’t customize every shortened link, though. It can be time-consuming trying to think of one no one else has used.

4) Bit.ly has all kinds of cool tools for managing your links.

For example, if you click “info” and take a peek at our info page for “The Small Business Triple Threat: Relationship Skills, Blogging, and Social Media”, you’ll see interesting statistics we can use to tweak our social media strategy. How many clicks a link got, what time people clicked, whether they’re retweeting it or sharing it, which social media profile you’re getting the most clicks from (if you use the same shortened link on different social media profiles), and more — these are all statistics you can use to tweak your strategy.

5) Bit.ly is free. I like free, don’t you?

Recently, bit.ly launched “bitly.Pro” that looks especially interesting. It’s free while in the beta stage, if your application to be a tester gets accepted. Why don’t you check it out?

What link shortener program do you use, and why? What features do you use with bit.ly that you can share here with our readers?

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Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.