But what if you want don’t want to give up the branding that comes with having your own URL? The solution seems to be to launch your own URL shortener, and one of the world’s most respected brands has done just that. Coca-Cola is now using CokeURL for its short links, a move that may lead many other brands to consider doing the same.
How To Do It
For starters, creating your own URL shortener isn’t much harder than using one of the existing services. In addition to building one in-house, you can use a service like awe.sm, yourls, or budurl (which Coke is using) to get up and running fairly quickly and inexpensively.
The Advantage
With retweeting becoming the currency of Twitter (and perhaps soon Facebook), having your own branded URLs means a lot of potential exposure for your company as users see your URLs instead of those of a conventional URL shortener. It also could create a perception of trust in the links – i.e., people are more apt to click something that looks like a known brand name than a random 4 or 5 letter combination of letters.
The Disadvantage
Other than the cost, which isn’t likely to be prohibitive to most, the only major disadvantage of going with your own shortener is missing out on some of the features and benefits offered by third-party services. Those benefits might become bigger over time – for example, Bit.ly is rumored to be launching its own news service based on the use of its links – but if your main goal is simply moving traffic from point a to point b with basic tracking, building your own URL shortner shouldn’t be much of a detriment.
Conclusion