{"id":1926,"date":"2013-04-25T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T14:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/propelbusinessworks.com\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2015-09-29T13:13:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T20:13:03","slug":"bitly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/propelbusinessworks.com\/promote\/social-media-strategy\/bitly\/","title":{"rendered":"How to use bit.ly to shorten links"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bit.ly is a great tool you can use to shorten URL’s, making them look cleaner and take up fewer characters. This is especially helpful on Twitter, when you only have 140 characters! Watch the video to learn how it works and how to do it.<\/p>\n

P.S. If you don’t have time or can’t have sound, we transcribed the video below!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Hi this is Sarah with Propel Businessworks, and today I am going to tell you what bit.ly is, what it does, and why you should use it to shorten your links. Most URL’s are a pretty long string of letters and numbers, like this:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/propelbusinessworks.com\/communication-planning-services\/12month-full-communications-plan\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Bit.ly takes those long URL’s and turns them into a shorter string of letters and numbers like this, so they don’t take up as much space:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/bit.ly\/17OZVQV<\/a><\/p>\n

Using bit.ly links is especially helpful on social media websites. Say I wanted to share the link that I just used in our example on our Facebook page. I would type in our comment and then copy the link in, which is just pretty long and takes up a lot of characters and a lot of space and just doesn’t look nearly as friendly. Instead of doing that, I can just use our bit.ly link, which just goes to the exact same web page, and it just is a lot cleaner and takes up less space, and it just is easier on the eye. \u00a0This is also helpful on Twitter, where you have far fewer characters to work with.<\/p>\n

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