While scrolling through my twitter stream last week, I noticed many lawyers posting the entire link to their blogs, articles and seminars instead of using a link shortening service such as budurl.com.
And while posting direct links is fine for beginners, lawyers who are serious about using social networking sites to interact with their community and share content should NEVER post a direct link from this point forward.
The reason for this is twofold:
1. When you shorten your links through sites like budurl, bit.ly or owl.y (just to name a few), you are able to track on your dashboard just how many people are clicking your links; and
2. The pre-shortened URL makes it easier for people to “re-tweet” or share your content with others.
As you can probably guess by reading number one, the tracking feature is very important in that it allows you to monitor just how popular or intriguing your content is to others. On the other hand, if you keep posting links and no one is clicking, I can promise you there is something wrong with your overall social media strategy.
Alternatively, if you are posting long links right into the content box and allowing twitter to shorten it for you (which usually looks like the first half of the link followed by a …..), when other people try to post or “re-tweet” your link in their own stream, the link is usually broken or it no longer fits within the 140 character limit.
And speaking from experience, if I have to play around with someone’s link to make it fit within 140 characters, it better be the best article I ever read. Otherwise, I’ll pass. I can promise you that thousands of other people feel the same way too, so it’s worth it for you to pre-shorten your links and get that content spreading like wildfire!
So take five minutes today sign up for a link shortening site like budurl.com. It’s free, it’s simple anand it’s a hugely important step in making sure you get the most out of your law firm’s social media strategy.
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Online Business Manager and law firm marketing expert, Laura Lee Sparks, is one of the most authoritative and well respected voices on attorney outsourcing, legal marketing and being a virtual assistant for lawyers on the web. Her advice and legal marketing campaigns have helped lawyers reach and surpass the million-dollar mark in their businesses numerous times thanks to her straight-forward advice and ability to make legal marketing principles easy to understand and implement. For further information on lawyer outsourcing programs or to contact Laura Lee directly, please email help@legalmarketingmaven.com
