Which tip is about how you use budurl.com and Twitter?

Twitter Tip #19 lists several of the URL shortening solutions and "MyTwitter Toolbar" http://mytwittertoolbar lists quite a few more, including Budurl. I can't say that any ONE "Twittin Secret" specifically discusses URL strategies, but that is a vibrant topic.

I use URL redirects and shorteners most the time when Twittering. Primarily for three reasons: 1) to save characters (obviously) 2) Tracking and 3) Keyword advantage (added to URL for the SEO value and as follow EYE CANDY.)

Because I often use TwitterSplit (http://twittersplit.com) the URL shortener is very important with the resulting doubly-long URLs required with TwitterSplit.

I've set-up many URLs at BudURL, but there are many equally compelling solutions beyond the BUD. I used Tweetburner for a while until they had a week long outage (at least it seemed that long) and lost some of my data. Sure enough, BUDurl later lost some of my data too in a shorter outage - plus, Budurl changed to a pay-me-money program AFTER I was all set-up (oh well).

My recommendation is to explore several, pick one you like, and hope for the best. There are even some built as FireFox extensions (included in MyTwitter Toolbar) that are interesting.

As far as Budurl tips... here's THE most important one (it's actually a Ping.fm tip too):

Put an asterisk * before your URL when posting through Ping.fm and your "hand-picked" url will not get auto-converted to another shortened URL.

And, when you think of URLs... don't think they only link to web pages. A URL can link to email, to an auto-post, to an image, video, PDF etc. It can also link to another Twitter static page.