Best Practices for Sharing Flyers
If you are promoting an event, very often there is a colorful flyer with all of the details. Using an eye-catching design can draw attention to your event. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating or distributing a digital flyer or poster.
Including Links
Short URLs
When a link is lenthgy, it is hard to type. This is especially challenging when dealing with an automatically generated URL, such as one for a google form or a youtube video. This can frustrate your audience, and risk alienating them. To avoid this hassle, using a URL shortening service is recommended. These services provide a short, easy to remember link that will redirect the visitor to another URL.
TinyURL provides an anonymous URL shortening service, and allows some flexibility in choosing the shortened URL. The web address for the UH Hilo youtube channel was shortened to https://tinyurl.com/UHHilo-YT using this service - easier to type than the full channel URL.
The University of Hawaiʻi URL shortening service is available to faculty, staff, and students at UH. This service creates short URLs of the format http://go.hawaii.edu/XyZ, where XyZ is randomly generated. The service maintains a list of generated short URLs for each username. It allows users to include link descriptions and remove outdated links.
Making QR Codes for URLs
A QR code is a 2 dimensional barcode that allows information such as a web address to be 'read' without requiring the user to type anything. Modern smartphone cameras are equipped with QR code readers.
Consider creating a QR code for your most prominent link, before creating your flyer, and including it somehwhere in the design. Taking this step will make it easier for people to go directly to your website, survey page, or social media profile.
QR Code Monkey, a free service, offers the ability. Users can change the color of the to match your design, and include a logo within the generated QR code. This can help people recognize the social media site to which you are linking, without scanning the code. The QR code at right links to the [UH Hilo facebook profile.
https://www.qr-code-generator.com/ provides an easy way to create and download a QR code.