Here is the second of 10 blog posts on using Hootsuite to become a Twitter power user.

For details about Hootsuite, including a screenshot of the dashboard, see yesterday’s introductory post. Here’s today’s recommended step:

Step 2. Shorten links
There are two reasons to shorten links in Hootsuite. First, you can include long URLs and still have 123 characters to play with (the shortened URL is always 17 characters. Second, the shortened URLs are tracked by Hootsuite’s stats so you can see which URLs are getting the most clicks from your followers.

Here’s how to shorten links in Hootsuite. First, type your Tweet into the tweet field. Second, type (or copy and paste) the URL you want to link into the field and click “Shrink it.” The URL will shorten to http://ow.ly/ZZZZ where ZZZZ is a combination of four random letters. The URL is automatically inserted into the Tweet field at the end of the Tweet (3 in the picture above). (To schedule the tweet, click “Send Later”, as described in yesterday’s post.) Click “Submit.”

Previous: Step 1. Schedule Tweets
Coming next: Step 3. Use multiple profiles