It’s no secret that Twitter has revolutionized link sharing.  Sure, there are other ways to send links out to your friends (email, Delicious, Facebook, etc), but never before has it been so easy, quick, or had the potential to be seen by so many.

In the same manner that Facebook power-pages like Big Prize rely on user-sharing, the practice of “Re-Tweeting” updates on Twitter can make your content visible to unknown hundreds.  The main thing standing between you and this unreached, information-searching population?  Brand identity.

In regards to social media, there is a myth that one must be easy going and personable when sharing links on Twitter.  That’s just not true.  While it is often the best approach, there are many web giants (blogs, news sites, and corporations) that use Twitter to great success without a personal approach.  This is often partly due to fame but often, it’s because they have created a great brand identity - one that is trusted by the masses (see Google, Mashable, etc).

So, how do you create brand identity in 140 characters or less?  One of the easiest ways is to have your own custom short URL - especially if you do lots of link sharing.  Until recently, users were limited to a small selection of short url sites - Bit.ly, Is.gd, etc.  While these services provide great usability and features, they don’t provide the end-user (i.e., the one clicking the link) the comfort of knowing what exactly they are clicking.  Obviously, the best method is to have created an online identity that is trusted - though this is becoming less and less important with account hacking and spam.

Apart from the simple cool factor, having your own custom URL can help establish a trusted online identity - whether you are a power blogger or simply an everyday link-sharer.  For you to post the link, you must have had access to both your shortening service AND Twitter.  Hopefully this will help ensure others that they aren’t clicking spam.

There are a few options (most of which I have tried), but the easiest to set up and maintain, at least in my opinion, is YOURLS.  The best thing about this service is that it’s self-hosted - meaning if the YOURLS site ever gets shut down, your links will still work. It provides great traffic statistics and sharing options as well.

What You Will Need:

• Domain Name - preferably something short (I chose http://rybo.us)
• Webhost
• Database

Installation is easy.  Simply follow the steps below and you’ll be sharing links in no time.

1. Purchase your domain and set up hosting.  If you have a Deluxe account at GoDaddy, you can just host the domain on your account and point it to a new folder.  If you do this, make sure you are hosting the domain and not simply forwarding it to the folder - otherwise your URL’s won’t work!
2. Set up a SQL database.  If you have a hosting account, there’s a good chance you have a few extra databases you are allowed to create.  Simply choose a name, login username and password.  Remember this information for step 4.
3. Download YOURLS from Google Code.
4. Unzip this folder and navigate to includes/config.php.  Open this file in a text editor.  Fill in the following information:

• YOURLS_DB_USER
  your MySQL username
  Example: ‘joe’
• YOURLS_DB_PASS
  your MySQL password
  Example: ‘MySeCreTPaSsW0rd’
• YOURLS_DB_NAME: The database name
  Example: ‘yourls’
• YOURLS_DB_HOST
  The database host
  Example: ‘localhost’
• YOURLS_DB_PREFIX
  The name prefix for all the tables YOURLS will need
  Example: ‘yourls_’
• YOURLS_SITE
  Your (short) domain URL, no trailing slash
  Example: ‘http://ozh.in’
• YOURLS_HOURS_OFFSET
  Timezone GMT offset
  Example: ‘-5′
• YOURLS_PRIVATE
  Private means protected with login/pass as defined below. Set to false for public usage (on an intranet for instance)
  Example: ‘true’

5. Save config.php and upload all of the files to the directory you created.
6. Navigate to http://example.com/admin - and you’re ready to start short-linking!

If you’re familiar with WordPress, chances are you know there are two options when writing posts - Visual and HTML. Using the Visual editor gives you more options for look and feel - alignment, colors, spell-check, etc. HTML is a very basic editor and only allows a few HTML shortcut buttons - bold, link, etc.

While using the Visual editor will allow you to use more of a WYSIWYG interface, learning a few HTML tags can save you quite a bit of time, allow you exact customization that Visual sometimes can’t offer, and speed up your input text.

Learning a few tags can make blogging quicker. For example, when you want to insert a link while in Visual editor, you must click a button, then wait for a Lightbox window to open up, giving you input text options for link address, name, etc. It also allows you to choose if your link opens in the same window or new tab/window. The problem comes when you have 10 links in one post. Opening the menu and filling out these options can take a long time. Why not instead, just learn to insert a link with HTML?

<a href="http://www.example.com" target="_blank">Example Link</a>

Example Link

Adding the target="_blank" forces the link to be opened in a new window. See how much quicker that is?

Here are a few more simple HTML tags for WordPress blogging:

Blockquote

<blockquote></blockquote>

So, since each of these HTML tags are already in blockquotes, this looks a bit odd. Hopefully you get the point.

Inserting Images

<img src="http://rybomedia.com/marly.jpg" />

Unordered List

<ul>Item One</ul><ul>Item Two</ul>

Item One

Item Two

Ordered List

<ol>Item One</ol><ol>Item Two</ol>

Item One

Item Two

List Items

<li>Item One</li><li>Item Two</li>

Item One

Item Two

Heading 1

<h1>Heading 1</h1>

Heading 1

Bold

<b>This is bold text!</b>

This is bold text!

Italic

<i>This is italicized text!</i>

This is italicized text!

Alignment

<p align="center">Center Text</p>

Center Text

<p align="left">Left Text</p>

Left Text

<p align="right">Right Text</p>

Right Text

<p align="justify">lots of texts</p>

Justified Text - You can’t really tell that it’s justified unless it extends to the edges of the post box. Hopefully me explaining this will have caused it to! Note - you will also have to have text that is multiple lines so that you can tell it’s all the same length.

Now all of that is pretty straight forward. However, it can come in really handy if you’re getting frustrated wit the Visual editor. Like any GUI-type interface, it is often easier and more efficient to type in the “basic code”. It’s sometimes easier to wrap <p align="center"></p> around the exact text you want than to try and highlight, then select menu items - especially when working with images and other media.

For some reason, typing in the HTML box is faster than the Visual box. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve noticed this on several occasions. If you don’t need all the bells and whistles while you type, switch over to HTML for lighter blogging.

Big Prize. If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, there’s a good chance you’re somewhat familiar with the name. Whether you check the fan page every hour, are constantly confused by the odd little sayings your friends write on their wall, or your Twitter homepage is sprinkled with #moonfruit tweets - you’ve seen the name.

In less than two weeks, and with over 140,000 fans at last check, Big Prize is taking over - by giving stuff away!  The people at Big Prize seem to understand something very basic to human nature - we like free stuff.  Want to attract a lot of people?  Give them really expensive things…for free.

Now, as with every “free giveaway” program, Big Prize has raised plenty of skepticism, especially after the consecutive winnings of Ben Scott.  Ben was one of the people I got to talk with, and he has a very interesting story about Big Prize.  Ben actually won 4 different prizes - 3 t-shirts and an iPod Touch.  While a lot of people posted some pretty rude things about him, he won it all fair and square, simply tweeting responses when he received Twitter SMS updates.  That’s not good enough for some people, and Ben gave up 2 of his shirts to calm the storm of people essentially angry over the fact that they didn’t win.

To be fair to those truly wary, I was also a tad hesitant at first.  However, after doing a little reading, tweeting, Facebook stalking (and discovering that it’s sponsored by Startlike), I was (and am) sold.  So how can someone just give away iPhones, MacBooks and golf clubs?  The answer is pretty straight forward, and involves something my mom has hounded me about for years - budgeting.

As with any company, Startlike has a marketing budget.  This is how they can give away awesome little freebies that we all love so much like t-shirts and koozies (honestly, what is it about free shirts that makes us salivate?).  It’s also how they can afford to chuck out more iPhones than self-taken mirror shots on an middle schoolers Facebook.  Which do you think is more effective - banner ads, pens, and rubber key chains or TaylorMade drivers, iPhones, and MacBooks?

As Michael Scott (Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Co. in Scranton, PA) has taught us, this is what’s called a “win-win-win”.  Big Prize experiences an exponential growth of fans (hopefully attracting partners), Startlike gets more attention, and all the fans and Twitter followers get the opportunity to win stuff.  Viral marketing at its finest, in my opinion.  Traffic, fans, and interest grows through Facebook “word-of-mouth”, with minimal-to-no direct advertising.

Ok, so all that’s fine and dandy - but why do you care?  As the end consumer, you just want to know that you aren’t getting scammed.  That’s where I come in.  Over the past few days, I’ve been gathering interviews from a few people who have been Big Prize winners.  Everyone I talked to was happy to answer my questions - I guess free iPhones tend to put people in a good mood.

Now, as Facebook is geared towards sharing information with friends, most people I talked with found Big Prize through the wall posts of friends or direct referrals.  Michelle Cramer, however, saw something about it on her Startlike homepage.  A few days ago, I wrote a post about how much I enjoy my own Startlike homepage, and it’s neat to see a winner who uses it on a regular basis.

Basically, though, I just wanted to find out if winners actually got their prizes, and if they got them quickly.  My answer:  a resounding double yes.  Everyone I talked with had great communication with Big Prize, and they received their prizes about a week after winning.

“They were really quick about it, within a week I got it.” - Binal Patel

“They told me on June 29th or 30th I would get the gift card . . . on July 8th. I got it on July 2nd.” - Benjamen Scott

“The prize . . . arrived by postal mail the following week. No muss, no fuss.” - Eric Alderman

“I received my [prize] about a week after winning it, which in my opinion is pretty quick!” - Michelle Cramer

So, after speaking to 4 completely satisfied winners, I can safely say that yes, Big Prize is giving things away - no scams, no ploys.  “No muss, no fuss.”

Now, explaining why I’m a Big Prize fan is like trying to explain to my best friend Daniel (a Celtics fan) why I’ve been a die-hard Laker for 11 years - they’re the best program in the league, backed by some terrific players (in Big Prize’s case, Startlike), and Kobe Bryant is the finest example of hard work, dedication, and fundamental perfection the NBA has to offer.  Ok, so that last one didn’t really apply at all, but it’s my blog.

Show me another company that can give away thousands of dollars in free stuff, carry on great personal customer relations, generate thousands and thousands of Facebook fans in a few days, and represent themselves with a gnome.  In the meantime, my computer’s broken, and I could really use a MacBook - so excuse me while I keep playing.