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A Top YouTube Channel Trailer Tip: Use Shortened URLs

One of my most popular video tutorials is about how to make a great YouTube channel trailer. A point Ineglected to make in it, though, is how you can use shortened links to make the channel trailer video'sdescription as enticing and clickable as possible.

The old description (and three reasons why I didn't like it)

This is how my YouTube channel trailer and its description looked bef ore. If you take a close look, you'llsee that several of the links to my social media prof iles - which I obviously want users to click on - are notvisible in their entirety. This small detail bothered me f or three reasons:

1. It just looks a litt le messy.2. The links cannot be glanced at and memorised, even if they aren't clicked on immediately.3. Any clicks on these links - visible f ront and centre on my YouTube prof ile - cannot be tracked easily, and Icannot measure their ef f ectiveness over t ime.

The new description (and why I like it much better)

I my updated YouTube channel trailer description recently, and there are a couple of main dif f erences:

1. The links are all shortened, look much neater, and are visible in their entirety.2. Several of the shortened links are customised with my own branding to make them much morememorable.3. All of the shortened links can be tracked via the sites on which they were created.

The URL Shorteners I used

I used several dif f erent URL shortening sites in my description, including:

bit.ly: My pref erred choice, which adds the shortened Amazon ("amzn") text to products on the site, andallows link tracking - sign up required f or URL customisation.

pin.st: Mirrors Pinterest site name and allows tracking - sign up required f or URLcustomisation.

goo.gl: Google's own URL shortener, includes publicly visible tracking but no customisation option atpresent.

Conclusion

Neatening up your YouTube channel trailer description and links is only a small detail, but I guess these litt lethings are the elements that add up to make the big impacts :)