You have spent a lot of time and money (or at the very least time) creating a YouTube video to promote your latest single, show your original take on a well known song, promote your tour and so on.

Your initial instinct is likely to copy and paste the video URL from the search bar to every social media platform you are on. Aside from not posting it anywhere it is the absolute worst thing you can do in terms of growing your fan base and interest in your music.

YouTube is designed to “keep people on YouTube.” It does not care if they are watching you or something related to their interest in cats. This means that at the end of video it will link them to material unrelated to you, and on the side bar (while they’re watching it) there will be “Kitten Attacks Drone (FUNNIEST EVER)” … which, face it, may get a click away from whatever you are trying to keep attention on.

What you SHOULD be doing is linking to a playlist you create of your material exclusively. While it does result in a longer link (which may not be suitable for sites such as Twitter) you can purchase an easy to remember domain name which forwards to it or simply go to a site which will shorten the URL for you (such as Google URL Shortener.) The benefit of using a URL shortening site is that you can see how many people clicked on the link.

There is, however, at least one place you should never be posting hard to remember URLs on (even shortened ones) and that is Instagram photo or video descriptions. No one and I emphasize “NO ONE” is here (in this life) to type in a string of random letters into their browsers (even if they want to show off their photographic memory.) Your best option is to have the direct link of whatever you are promoting in your Instagram biography. People are on Instagram to press things on their screen so they should be able to press on your link too.