Source: Entrepreneur
Here’s a new one to file under “Things You Never Knew You Needed”: a link shortener.
Link shorteners are exactly what they sound like: tools that take a too-long URL and condense it into a new, briefer one. According to the project management platform CoSchedule, link shorteners were introduced initially because email systems of bygone years would wrap an email after 80 characters, which broke lengthy URLs and rendered them unusable. The eventual development of social media platforms made link shorteners all the more popular as users sought to conform to character limits. (Remember when you only had 140 characters to work with on Twitter? Ah, simpler times.)
Over time, link shorteners have proven themselves to be a valuable tool for marketing professionals, and for several reasons. First of all, most let you customize your links so that they’re not just shorter, but better to look at. Links that are cleaned up in this way are typically seen as more trustworthy (i.e., less spammy) than those with jumbles of random characters, so customers are more likely to click on them.
Some of the more powerful link shorteners do more than just reduce character counts, offering additional tools to track links, organize them with tags, and add custom scripts. One such example is TagOn, an ingenious link shortener that promises to turn your links into lead-generating powerhouses.
On sale for a limited time, TagOn’s Pro Plan comes with a host of awesome features to which subscribers get access for life. For one, it lets you attach the embed scripts you use on your website to the links you share, which means you can share live chats, opt-in forms, and videos with just a few clicks. You can also build custom audiences by creating shortened links with retargeting pixels and tracking codes, or create calls-to-action that’ll drive them back to your site.
Links created on TagOn can be created from any RSS feed, and offer endless opportunities for customization. You’re free to edit your links’ meta titles, descriptions, and images for sharing on social media, and even include your own domain name for extra personalization. Your links may be short, but their potential impact is vast.