How to Create a Branded Short Link in 5 Minutes

A branded short link replaces the anonymous lnky.click/xyz with a recognizable prefix: lnky.click/acme/launch. That single change makes the URL look intentional, lifts click-through rates, and stops a generic short-link service from being the most prominent name in your campaign URL.

In Lnky, this works as a path-prefix branding — you create a "branding" with a slug (acme), and every short link under that branding is served at lnky.click/{branding}/{shortcode}. No DNS records, no SSL setup, no waiting on infrastructure. Five minutes from signup to shipped link.

What you'll need

• A free Lnky.click account.
• A short, brand-aligned slug (4–12 characters works best).

That's it.

Step 1 — Create a branding

Log into your Lnky dashboard and go to Brandings → New branding. Two fields:

• Name — internal label, only you see it. "Acme marketing brand" or similar.
• Slug — the URL fragment users will see. Keep it short, lowercase, hyphen-separated.

Examples of good slugs: acme, acme-marketing, goacme, acmeco. Bad slugs: Acme.Marketing.Team (uppercase, dots), dashboard (collides with reserved routes — Lnky blocks these anyway).

Save. Your branding is live immediately.

Step 2 — Ship your first link

From the dashboard, Create link → pick the branding you just created → paste the long URL → optionally set a custom slug for the shortcode (launch, q4-promo, pricing-2026).

Your link is now live at:

lnky.click/acme/launch

Click counts, geo data, referrers and device info start logging the moment someone visits.

Why path-prefix branding works

The point of branded short URLs isn't to swap the domain — it's to put your name in the URL where users see it. Three concrete benefits:

1. Trust. A URL with your brand reads as intentional. Generic short links read as forgettable infrastructure.
2. Scannability. Users skim URLs. lnky.click/acme/launch tells them more than lnky.click/X9kP2.
3. Campaign hygiene. When you ship 20 campaign links across email, social and paid, the branding slug groups them visually for anyone auditing where traffic is going.

How many brandings do I need?

• Solo founder / indie: one is plenty.
• Marketing team at one brand: one is plenty (acme covers everything).
• Agency with multiple clients: one branding per client. Lnky's Agency plan supports 20.
• Multi-brand company: one per brand.

The Free plan ships 3 brandings out of the box, Pro adds 10, Agency goes to 20.

Pick the right shortcode

Once the branding is set, the shortcode is what differentiates each link under it. Two patterns:

• Auto-generated (default): Lnky picks a 6-character random string. Fine for one-off shares.
• Custom slug: type one in. lnky.click/acme/launch reads better than lnky.click/acme/aZb9Kp. Use a custom slug for any link you'll share in copy, in print, or in voice.

Custom slugs are per-branding-unique — acme/launch doesn't collide with another user's partner/launch.

Combine with custom OG tags

Path-prefix branding takes the URL halfway to looking professional. The other half is the link preview — the card that unfurls when you share the URL in Twitter, LinkedIn or Slack.

By default, the preview reflects the destination page. Lnky lets you override the OG title, description and image per short link. So your lnky.click/acme/launch link can unfurl with a custom headline like "Last 48 hours — 30% off everything" even if the destination page just says "Sale".

Combined with the branded path prefix, the link feels owned end-to-end.

Common gotchas

• Reserved slugs. Words that collide with Lnky's own routes (dashboard, api, admin, pricing, blog) are blocked. Pick a brand-specific word instead.
• Slug case sensitivity. Brandings are lowercase only. ACME and acme would be treated the same anyway, but the input enforces lowercase.
• Don't change a branding slug after shipping. If you change acme → acme-co after publishing 50 links, the old acme/... URLs break. Pick the slug carefully up front.

What to do next

• Set custom OG title/description/image on each link so the social preview matches your campaign creative.
• Add a QR code for offline channels — every Lnky link has one, downloadable as SVG (vector, sharp at any size).
• For long-running URLs, enable link health monitoring on the Agency plan so a broken destination doesn't go unnoticed.

Path-prefix branding is the highest-impact 5-minute change you can make to a campaign URL strategy. Ship one this week.