Good practice with bit.ly links

Reassure folk

The problem with link shorteners is that when you look at them, you just can't tell if they will lead you to a nefarious place, no matter who it is that is giving one.

If you want to use a link shortener AND still reassure folks who see it, then here's a neat way using bit.ly (I'm sure at least some other link shorteners will have a similar facility)

Go ahead and create one now if you want to try it for yourself. Once you've created the shortened link, copy it and paste it into a new window/tab but before you hit return, append a + to the end

Here's one I did earlier..

If you want to see what I mean, here's one I created for the a post I made in the Zazzle forum: http://bit.ly/tRPGtr+

The + tells bit.ly not to go straight to the destination but display an intermediate page containing the decoded link. Folks will be reassured when they can see where the shortener will take them.

Words you can use

If you do the above, here are some words you can use after giving the link:

Adhering to good practice, I've appended a "+" to the bit.ly link so you can see where it will take you. You have to click the long link it shows you, to finally get to my blog post.

Just copy and paste it somewhere so it's there when you need it.

Happy Zazzling!