This is the second post in my ad-hoc Tweetin’ Right series. 
I gave Micah a hard time recently for posting only a URL as a tweet (update) in Twitter. He, quite reasonably, asked me why this was a problem. There are a few reasons.
- No context. Just having a URL come to me doesn’t make me want to click on it. I want to an idea of what it’s about before I click on it. Part of this is actually due to a Twitter feature that automatically creates a TinyURL and uses that in your tweet from URLs that are too long. Micah pointed out that the URL he posted was very clear (example.com/meaningful-keywords-here), but that was getting lost when it was TinyURLed.
- Why is it interesting? I’m guilty of not doing this myself at times in my weekly Around the web posts, but if someone is telling me about something I am generally just as interested in what someone thinks about it as I am in the thing itself. A brief commentary on the item or snarky remark will get me to click the link pretty quick.
Pretty straightforward, right?
Good example
Wow, I wish I could hit like this in the sand: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ-__CC0Sv8
Bad example
http://youtube.com/watch?v=W9_lTC0p93I
And there you have it.
Popularity: 13% [?]
turnipHed adds this Comment:
I totally agree with you - I do my best to follow the “good example” what really sucks though is if the URL is really long - not sure if you can post over 140 characters then — even if the URL is ‘Tiny’ed
October 1st, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Geof F. Morris adds this Comment:
This is important regardless of where you’re linking—context is king.
October 5th, 2007 at 12:36 pm