How to Customize Your Bitly Links

When I first learned about link shrinking, I was that I could save some text space. However,  I worried about the clickability factor.  Since the shrinking process changes the URL to a bunch of random letters and numbers, you can't tell where the link is going to take you.  With clickbait and other tricky lures out there, I thought people would avoid clicking on something that wouldn't give them a sense as to where they're going.  I'm sure you've wondered the same thing.

Then I found out about Bit.ly's customization tool, and that fixed everything.  If you sign up with them, you have the option to shorten and tweak the URL.  

To demonstrate, I'm going to use my blog Why Your Podcast is a Bag of Potato Chips and create a shortened link.

I'm going to paste the URL and get the shorter link.

Then, I'm going to co into the "customize" box and change the last section to "PodcastChips".

I get a confirmation that the link has been changed, and I click SAVE at the bottom of the column.  From that point on, I can share that custom link for the blog post.  

It's a great way to give you links some identity!

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