TFN#60: 🪜Convert loong links into tiny, personalized ones

A few days back, I received this Experiential Education conference Google Form link in an email:
​https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScRkN-dnFrE_uIpPyKV410P2Oz5SFYMu3DYG_iAyhMyJMqu7g/viewform​

It’s a Google Form, like this:

Imagine, if I wanted to provide this Google Form link in posters or audio marketing to spread the word, it would be useless.

Because, as the charactercounter.com shows, it has 99 characters and you can’t expect anyone to type this link in their browser to check the form.

So, what’s the solution?

We have three options

We can:
1. Create a random short link
2. Create a personalized short link
3. Create a QR code

Let’s do all these three in a single setup: TinyURL

I recommend using TinyURL. Launched in 2002, it is the pioneer of Link Shortening services.

Just go to https://tinyurl.com/ and Sign up for free. We won’t require any paid plans for our usage.

But before that, what are we trying to do?

We want to create a short link for our original 99-character long link. So when we enter the short link, it will redirect us to the original link.

This is how TinyURL or any link-shortening service works:

Let’s get back to our solutions.

1. Create a random short link

For our first solution, we won’t create any personalized links. Just a random link autogenerated by TinyURL.

Step-1​
You will see this screen. Make sure you have signed up and signed in.

Step-2​
Paste the long link in the first field.

Step-3​
Hit the “Shorten URL” button.

Step-4​
Your short link is randomly generated!
The link is 28 characters long.
If you ignore https://, that makes it just 20 characters long!

2. Create a personalized short link

The short link is good, but if I want to publicize it over the Radio or print on leaflets to get registrations, it is still inconvenient for people to type the link in their browser and it is not memorable.

So, let’s create a personalized one.

Step-1​
Go to the TinyURL homepage again or click the “Shorten Again” button.

Step-2​
Enter the long URL.

Step-3​
Now, instead of hitting the “Shorten URL” button, enter a unique memorable combination of words and numbers in the “Enter Alias” field. If someone has already created it, we need to create another one. Because there can’t be the same web address for two web pages.

I chose AEE2024 (AEE = Association for Experiential Education)
But turns out, it is already taken!

(Funny thing: to check what webpage has taken tinyurl.com/AEE2024 I entered it in my browser. It is someone’s Google Drive link with possibly Russian files.)

So, I finally chose: AEEpune2024
And ta-da!
It was available:
tinyurl.com/AEEpune2024

Now I can put it on any poster or Radio advertisement asking people to register by going to “tiny url dot com slash AEE pune 2024”.

3. Create a QR code

TinyURL provides an in-built QR code generation facility.
As you’d have figured out, you’d only need to click on the “QR” button.

Tracking clicks

I love this feature.
It gives us a raw count of visitors on our TinyURL link.
​Just go to the “My URLs” section on your right-hand side corner.
It will show you your links and the number of clicks. (If you want an even more detailed analysis of clicks, you need to get a premium account.)

See these four options:
​Label-1: You can check the number of clicks.
​Label-2: Next year, if you want to make it AEEpune2025, you can do it here in just one click. Hit rename.
​Label-3: The QR code generator is still here.
​Label-4: If you want to delete the TinyURL link, click it. This means that once deleted, tinyurl.com/AEEpune2024 won’t redirect to our registration form.

Such free tools are so powerful that most people think you need to get some sort of certification to learn and use them.

So,Reader, have you used TinyURL or any similar services? How has been your experience? Share it with me.
​Just hit reply.

Reads of the week:

I never thought that the Vulture-Diclofenac effect could hurt religion too!

As you already know, I do not believe in doomsday prophecies in the name of climate, environment and energy. But diclofenac’s effect in India is fascinating. There’s no doomsday. In about 20 years, the population of vultures was reduced by 99% due to the usage of diclofenac as a medicine in Cows and other domestic animals.

But there’s more to the story which I didn’t know: it also hurts the Parsis. Because they don’t bury or cremate the dead. They have sky-burial. Flock of vultures feed on the dead bodies and finish them within a matter of minutes.

This is important in a sky burial because the dead body should not stay lying around long decomposing and soiling the earth. Parsis believe that a decaying human body pollutes the earth, hence it should be processed by the birds as soon as possible.

See this photo of the sky burial ceremony. You can see the flocks of vultures on the walls, waiting for the dead.

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