There are all sorts of opportunities to get your brand “out there” on a regular basis. You are likely already familiar with many of these. You may already have a company blog, for instance, as well as company Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. Your marketing efforts may have even extended into promotional products like pens and t-shirts.

One area that many companies (and individuals) continue to ignore is the branding of shortened URLs, particularly in the 140-character confines of Twitter. By and large, people make use of standard services like TinyURL and Bit.ly for their URL shortening needs, but there is a branding opportunity here for often-used links.

This can be done one of two ways. First, the standard URL shortening services oftentimes allow users to define their own short URLs. Instead of a random jumble of characters, the identifier can be a branded name or recognizable word. For instance, you can try http://bit.ly/makemoneybook to get the Make Money Online book by John Chow and Michael Kwan. That’s far better than something like http://bit.ly/abhhfR.

Going one step further, you can brand a short URL with your own domain by using redirects (or other similar solutions). If you try going to http://michaelkwan.com/moneybook, you’ll end up on the same page as the first bit.ly link above. This way, if a tweet containing that link is retweeted (or otherwise shared) elsewhere, it can retain that level of branding.

Your brand is your lifeblood. Without it, your company easily blends in among all your competitors.