Marketing in the Cloud Blog

Short URLs are the lifeblood of social apps.  The new breed of short-url apps enable you to tag and track your visitors post-click and store mucho metrics — e.g. the ad campaign visitors clicked, facebook page they liked, or tweet they clicked  etc.  And services like Bit.ly, Tinyurl, and Ow.ly make shortening URLs supremely easy. But what if you want a bit more control over the branding of your URLs?    How ’bout your own API-enabled, short-url engine with custom branded links like   you.yourdomain/link ?

If you’re a Google Apps for Business subscriber, get thee to Google Labs and activate your own enterprise shortener. Free.

Requirements:

• Google Apps for Business (e.g. Google for domains)
• Administrator access
• Access to your domain DNS settings
• URLs to shorten

1. Activate Google Short Links

Choose Add it Now then accept license agreement.

2. Create Your URL Settings

In order for Google Short Links to work correctly you’ll need to create a sub-domain (or CNAME). Traffic to this subdomain will route through Google’s servers rather than your own. The Great-Big-Goog then forwards your visitor on to the endpoint you define later on.

3. Set Your Short Link Policy & API Access Credentials

If you want to be able to create links programatically, set an API access key here (there’s a sample python script you can download here as well).  There happens to be a little cloud integration company in Austin, who can help you out…

4. Visit Your DNS Provider & Create a CNAME

Visit your hosting provider or domain registrar (e.g. GoDaddy) to create a CNAME record that points to Google’s servers @ ghs.google.com.

5. Create Your First Short Link

Visit the sub-domain you created above — e.g. links.yourdomain.com. If everything’s up to snuff, you’ll see the Google Short Links manager for your account. Each user within your Apps for Business account can now make and manage their own urls.

6. View Metrics for each Short Link

To view and manage your links, choose “Find Out Now” link at on the Short Link manager page. View your click count and edit your url as needed.

7. Create Your URL Bookmarklet

1. Click and drag the bookmarklet button up to your bookmarks bar. 2. Customize your button text. As you browse any site, simply click the bookmarklet to create a linnk via Google Short Links to the web page!

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Google Short Links enable your team to create, manage and share links from within Google Apps for Business.
• Creating custom short-urls is quick and easy when you use the Bookmarklet.
• With a bit of API goodness you can create on-demand urls for all your key campaigns, collateral and creative. Integrate away!

Cons:

• Services like Bitly are a quick click direct from your social app clients and offer greater link options and more robust statistics.

If you’ve been wanting to offer your own url-shortener in-house, Google Short Links is the shortest, cheapest path.

Get thee shortening.

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We help marketers connect and integrate cloud-based marketing services like Salesforce, Eloqua, Marketo, Twitter and 100s more. Result? Our customers get a more agile marketing department with real-time, 360 degree control of campaigns, customers, content and KPIs.