Hyper-link tips: sending links that work

Copyright 4ReliableComputers.Net

rev 2012-12-01

 

Overview: Long hyperlinks are often broken into multiple lines by subscriber email applications, so they may not work properly when clicked-on by the recipient. Listserves, which relay one message to many subscribers, are an effective way to disseminate information. But if the subscribers do not see your content when they click on the blue-underlined hyper-link you included, most will not know how to remedy that.

 

Problem: Since most casual email users don't take the time to deeply understand their tools, recipients of a link broken into two or more lines are usually not nimble enough to assemble the link pieces to get the content. Better preparation by the author can make a significant difference in how many subscribers are enticed to view the content.  See this conversion tools:

http://tinyurl.com/

https://bitly.com/

They are used to condense long URLs into short ones, which are less likely to be broken apart into multiple lines.

 

Examples:

a long URL such as

http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Globally/dp/B003FSUDM4/

can be shortened to this referring link (free of charge) by using http://tinyurl.com/

http://tinyurl.com/3yh5zn3

or can be shortened to this referring link (free of charge) by using https://bitly.com/

http://amzn.to/Ui7JVQ

 

Best practices for composing email including hyper-links:

·        Place each hyper-link on its own line, a line containing nothing but the hyper-link.

·        Explain *why* readers might want to consider the hyper-link content.

·        Attribute the content to its original author and news source.

·        For-profit media, such as news web sites, may only leave free access to articles available to non-subscribers for a finite number of days (often 7 days) For this reason, it is a good practice to include the plain text (not formatted text, and not graphics) in the body of the email. This is subject to fair use and copyright laws, of course.

 

 

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