Posts tagged blog community building
This is why I am not reading or tweeting your blog post
Nov 20th
Do you want to increase the readership of your blog by 400% in just one easy step?
Lean in close now as I share this blogging secret: “Stop writing sucky headlines.”
In today’s world, you simply MUST craft a descriptive, accurate, catchy and “tweet-able” headline. I know this aspect of blogging has been written about before so I am mystified as to why it remains such an obstacle to so many bloggers.
If you don’t have a headline that grabs me by the throat in a nano-second you have lost me, and most other people too.
I swiped a couple headlines from my blog reader to illustrate both good and bad examples of blog headlines. Maybe one of them is yours? Here are real blog headlines that were so bad I could not bear to click:
“False Hope” — The headline is smug. The writer assumes the post is so epic that they don’t even have to indicate what it is about. Unless you’re Malcolm Gladwell, I’m probably not going to read this.
“Your Video Presence” — This has the potential to be an interesting topic but the headline is too generic. It doesn’t tell me enough about the angle of the article to force me to take the next action. I’m a busy guy. Sell me baby.
“What’s in a Word?” — I don’t know and I won’t find out either. It’s clever but not descriptive enough to capture my attention.
“A Walk in the Cloud, Part 2″ — Cloud computing is an interesting topic but a “series” generally does not work for a blog. When I see this headline, I think “Well I missed Part 1 so I should probably skip this.” It’s like walking in during the middle of a movie.
“Monday Inspiration” — This could be a great article but it’s a lazy headline. Unless I am a regular reader and already interested in you as a person, this is probably not enough information for me to click through.
“Want to grow your revenue? Check out B2B Marketing Sales Leads, a sales lead generation program” Ewwww. You’re trying to sell me something. Yuck. Do this a second time and you’ll get deleted from the blog reader. No check that. I’ve already deleted you.
“New Yelp feature turns photos into online menus and we also compare tablet VS smartphones usage stats” This is an interesting headline but it’s too long. At 100 characters, it’s too long to tweet once you get the sender’s name in there. And remember, if it gets RT’d, that adds more characters. So keep headlines short enough to encourage social sharing.
Now, here are some great headlines from the pros:
How some people are using Triberr to kill blogging By The JackB — This headline promises a fresh angle on a hot technology. It indicates that people are mis-using Triberr to hurt something near and dear to me. I want to read this.
5 Lessons From the Best Example of Content Marketing Ever By Jay Baer — For my money Jay is one of the best headline writers in the business. And he knows a number in a headline is gold. Probably increases “sharing potential” by 30%. Eight of my 10 most popular blog posts have a number in the headline and that goes for most other bloggers too.
What is sharing on Facebook worth in cold hard cash? By Jeff Bullas — Jeff is a master blogger who understands how to write a headline. He never fails to grab you and his content keeps you there. Combining “Facebook” with “cold hard cash” is a winner.
Five Tips to Navigate Sandy’s Stress and Sensory Overload By Judy Martin — We recently wrote about how capitalizing on the Hurricane Sandy tragedy was a bad idea. But here’s another take. Judy writes a post that is timely, appropriate, and HELPFUL in a time of need.
Did technology kill curiosity? By Christian Hollingsworth — Christian is a masterful headline writer. In this example, he takes a simple question that might be on his mind, and the mind of others, and riffs on an answer. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
Transmedia Writing By Geoff Livingston — Is it possible to get an idea across in just two words? Geoff did it. “Transmedia” writing promises to explore a fresh concept and it made me click. Bravo.
So here is the Schaefer Ever-So-Useful List of Best Blog Post Headline Practices:
- Make it “tweetable short.”
- It should be descriptive and accurate. Don’t EVER mislead readers.
- Make it creative enough to stand out in a crowded blog reader.
- Numbered lists work well.
- Grab me with something I have never seen before.
- Make sure the “value proposition” offers something helpful.
- Use descriptive and unusual verbs and adjectives.
- Don’t make your headline an after-thought. It’s the most critical part of the post.
Illustration: This is a very famous headline announcing the wrong presidential election result, held up by the true victor Harry Truman.
What Proctology Exams Teach Us About Social Media
Nov 15th
By {grow} Community Member Chris Reimer
As Hurricane Sandy swept across the Eastern seaboard, killing hundreds of Americans, racking up billions of dollars in damage, and wreaking havoc on millions of lives, certain intrepid bloggers thought it a wise idea to write about “What Hurricane Sandy can Teach us About Social Media.”
Ripping an event from the headlines and attaching “lessons for social media” to it is a common and cheap way to develop content. But sometimes I have to wonder if these bloggers are even thinking. Comparing social media to a deadly hurricane when so many people are suffering? Do we really need that?
Original blog post topics are hard to come by (I don’t know how the Mark Schaefers and Mitch Joels of the world do it). And it sure is tempting to write about what the latest movie, celebrity or news event “teaches” us about social media. But let me state this plainly — Using a devastating hurricane superstorm to draw attention to your blog is a desperate attempt at attention and a breach of good taste.
Yes, we need to keep learning about social media. But I’m not sure we need a superstorm to happen upon these truths. If you believe this is the only way you can get through to people, perhaps you just need to quit now and board up the business (I guess it is easy to do hurricane analogies).
With so many of these ridiculous “social media is like …” posts out there, I did a little brainstorming to figure out the most ridiculous analogy to social media I could think of. Here it is. Proctology Exams.
So, in tribute to all these dumb blog posts comparing social media lessons to something in the news, I submit to you “The Top 8 Things Proctology Exams Teach us About Social Media:”
1. Everyone’s afraid to get started. No one wants to go to a proctologist, even though statistics show cancer detection and prevention saves lives. Companies are similarly afraid of jumping in on social media, even though statistics show that adoption is accelerating, ROI is provable and communication as we know it (TV, radio, print) has been terribly disrupted.
2. You have to fully undress. No one likes to be fully exposed. This is complete vulnerability. Someone else is in control, and a host of embarrassing things could befall you.
3. Abdication of consciousness. During the holiest of holy examinations, you will probably be anesthetized. “Just knock me out and get it over with.” This sounds quite similar to the relegation of all social media responsibility to an intern – “I don’t have time and I don’t want to know what’s going on. You’re young, and this is a young person’s game–just handle it.”
4. You better use the correct tools. A rubber glove, social media monitoring software. Make sure you tweet from the right account, and watch where you’re going with that finger… “MOOOON RIVER.“
5. It takes a sensitive touch. One false move and assholes are inflamed. I think that is self-explanatory.
6. You might be afraid to discover the truth. Upon examination, sometimes you find an inflammation, or worse. In the wrong circumstances, social media provides amplification of a problem that’s already there. Your company is completely unprepared and unable to spring forth to bigger and better things. Social media will lay bare that truth.
7. The procedure sometimes leads to much more. A proctology exam sometimes precedes a full-blown colonoscopy. Neither is terribly fun. If social media reveals inherent, systemic problems with your business, you might need a full brand refresh and messaging platform overhaul.
8. Sometimes you need to go beyond manual. Doc uses his finger, but sometimes a proctoscopy is done instead where a device called a proctoscope is used to examine the “cavity.” Similarly, social media can be done manually, but sometimes you may wish to employ a device or series of devices like Hootsuite, Sprout Social or Radian6.
Well, suddenly I’m feeling a bit green. What say you? What did I miss? And oh yes … tune in next week for my post on what Pauly Shore teaches us about social media.
Chris Reimer (@RizzoTees) is VP of Social Media at Falk Harrison
8 ways blog writing is unique
Oct 28th
There are many great writers who have unsuccessful blogs. Here’s why. They may be great writers, but they are not great bloggers. There’s a big difference. Here are eight ways that blog writing differs from how you might write in school or at work.
1) Headlines matter. A lot.
Nobody is going to sit by the fireplace with a glass of wine and relax with a good blog post. Blog readers are SKIMMERS. More than likely they are scanning their inbox or blog reader to figure out what posts are worthy. So a headline that says “My views on soap” or “Thinking back” are not going to cut it. You have to GRAB ‘em and make them read. Here are characteristics of great headlines:
- Catchy
- Descriptive
- Accurate
- Contains keyword
- Tweetable (short)
Also, any headline that indicates a numbered list is going to attract more eyeballs. Busy readers like lists.
2) Write upside down
In school, we are taught to write linearly. A beginning, a middle, an end. That does not work on blogs. You have to tell the ending first. I call that writing upside down. Busy readers are going to be bored and frustrated if you don’t tell them exactly why they are there and what the pay-off is. So start with the end … and then explain it.
3) Keep it short.
You have to EARN the right to go long. If you are Malcolm Gladwell, you have earned the right to go long. If you are just starting to build your audience, don’t challenge them with long posts unless it is something extraordinary. Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 words is golden.
4) Use sub headings
A sub-heading is like a mini headline – like what you see above this sentence. Subheads draw attention down the length of the blog post and breaks up the block of gray. This is especially important in a challenging reading environment like a smartphone.
5) Use your original voice
In journalism school I was taught to keep my “voice” OUT of my writing. Just stick to the facts. The best blog writing weaves your personal narrative into the discussion and lets your personality shine. When somebody wants to write a guest post for {grow} I challenge them to write a post that ONLY they could write. Dig deep. Be you. That is the heart of originality and that is the source of blogging success!
6) Keep it RITE
This is easy to remember. Try to make every blog post R- relevant, I – interesting, T – timely and E – entertaining. If you can do that consistently, you will be creating share-able blog content.
7) Be conversational.
Throw the rules out the door. Write like you speak. Even. If. It’s. Choppy. After you have written your blog post, read it out loud. If it doesn’t sound like you simply talking to your audience, lighten it up. Just tell them the story.
8) End with a question
How do you know if your blog is making an impact?
Oct 23rd
About two years ago, I was really down on my blogging.
I would work hard on something that I thought was really smart and provocative and it would just fall flat. And then I would put out something dumb like “The 20 Funniest things you can do on Twitter” and it would go viral. It didn’t make any sense. It was disheartening.
I felt like my hard work was going nowhere. Maybe you feel that way sometimes too?
No matter how much you stare at your Google Analytics, it’s not going to interpret for you whether anybody cares about your blog.
Even comment sections aren’t much help.
A rule of thumb is that only about 2 percent of your readers leave comments. That’s a generalization I have found that holds up across many types of blogs. Readers may be too busy, too shy, or just not interested enough to comment. So you need a LOT of readers before you start getting comments.
Drastic action
In addition to only hearing from a vast minority of your readers, there is a big difference between a “comment” on the topic and real “feedback” on how you are doing as blogger – if you are making a dent in the way people act and think.
I realized that if I was going to make truly meaningful connections with these strangers popping in on my blog and figure out if this thing was having any impact, I was going to have to make an effort to get to know them better. So, I started to call up my readers.
I made a goal to call at least three of my blog readers per week over a period of a couple of months and by far the overwhelming lesson I learned was yes — I was having an impact, in so many unexpected ways.
I’ll never forget a call I had with Caroline Di Diego, a businesswoman and entrepreneur who had left so many interesting comments on my blog. She told me in great detail how one quite obscure blog post I had written had changed her outlook on business and marketing. Although the post had run two years ago, she could still recall its lessons and it still impacts her even to this day.
This conversation meant so much to me, because I had been particularly proud of that blog post but it had not been a popular post in terms of how much it had been shared. In fact, I was so disappointed by the reaction to this thoughtful post that I wondered why I was blogging at all.
A re-energizing impact
Caroline’s reaction — and the reaction of so many others — gave me a new energy, a new commitment to blogging, because these conversations made me realize that even though I might not hear it every day, I am having an impact.
I recently recounted how one physician who averaged just 4.5 readers a day found out that she had impacted a life.
My point is, if you’re working hard on your blog, it may be difficult to know if you are really having an impact unless you reach out and actually talk to people about it.
What has your experience been? Are you making an impact and how do you know?
Illustration: I added the WordPress logo to a Bigstock.com illustration
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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