Roger, I do not think it is necessary, but from a branding perspective, to stand out from the crowd of normal bit.ly users (I'm one of them, btw), it could be a good idea. It may be for my site.

I'd say it depends on the site and the niche.

Thanks. This is great info.

The actual URL takes up too much space. Also, you rarely see people using full URLs in tweets. From a "we know what we're doing here" perspective, the full URL might not be a great idea. Do you disagree?

Matt Cutts said (in the video linked to above) that any decent shortener will 301 redirect the shortened URL and thus pass link juice. I guess I am more concerned about it from a branding/tracking perspective now.

This sounds like a good idea. What service do you recommend for creating a custom short URL? Would bit.ly PRO work fine for this?

Hi everyone -

The site I am working on is going to start giving users the option to tweet that they completed an action. It reads, for example, "I just took the first step to (    ) with (site): (shortened link) via (Twitter name)"

Here's my question:

Should I worry about the fact that the shortened URL (we're possibly going to use Twitter's shortener T.Co, but I'm not dedicated to it) changes each time? Should we instead have a permanent short URL for the homepage (where we are going to direct people who click the link in the tweet)?

Thanks!