Tag Archives: Brian Solis

A great title is essential if you want your blog post read

54561v2 max 250x250 A great title is essential if you want your blog post read

Image via CrunchBase

Long blog post short: please be as descriptive as possible when titling your blog posts. In today’s decontextualized world of walls, feeds, RSS, email, diggs, reddits, Stumbles, tweets, and retweets, you need to attract your potential reader based only on the appeal of your title and nothing else, especially if you’re new to blogging and don’t happen to be Seth Godin.

Use all 70 characters that Google indexes for each post title but make sure the most important message of the title are nearer the beginning of the title. Don’t bury the lead in the post and don’t bury the lead in the title, either. Tweetmeme and other sharing services chop off long titles so while you should always go long, keep your essentials right at the beginning.

I wrote Blog so you can be taken completely out of context in which I discussed how essential it is to make sure each blog post you write needs to be completely self-containted and self-referential; now, I notice I missed the most important part of every blog post: the blog title.

With Twitter, Facebook, Google+, retweets, sharing, and RSS via Google Reader, all anyone ever sees is the title of whatever’s shared, especially if you’re not Beth Kanter, Kami Huyse, Seth Godin, CC Chapman, Shel Israel, Geoff Livingston, Richard Laermer, Olivier Blanchard, Christopher Penn, Chris Brogan or Brian Solis.  If you’re one of these bloggers, your title is a little less important; however, your name may well be stripped by the confines of a 140-character world, so a good title is a good habit even for our hallowed celebrities since their personal brand doesn’t always move as fast as the share.

So, though we’re all tempted to indulge in puns, in humor, in wordplay, and in breezy cool, please try to keep put your editor hat on every time you post to your blog.  Who, what, when, where, why, and how. Four Ws and an H.

Also, remember that the title you choose needs to be both appealing, compelling, accurate, and trustworthy to both your human readers and also to machines: the spiders and bots that Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, Bing, and the other search engines send to visit your blogs and everyone else’s shares.

I hate it that WordPress really wants a title first because the title should be one of the last thing one provides. I like to save my summary paragraph and my final title until the last minute and two of my editors, Mike Moran, here, and JD Lasica, over at Socialmedia.biz, almost always provide my posts with even more focused titles and summary paragraphs. Of course, these two gems are reformed journalists, so I benefit greatly from their experience.

For this post, I chose “A great title is essential if you want your blog post read” though I would have loved to choose something more cheeky like “All you got is your title” or “You need to have them at hello” or “Bait your blog post with a great title,” though I wasn’t sure.  (And we’ll see what Mike does with the final version before it goes live)

I know how I consume blogs, twitter, and my Facebook wall, and 70% of my click-throughs are based on the title of the post.  The other 20% is based on the person who does the sharing — including the blogger — and the final 10% is the blog it’s on, such a Mashable.  That’s my percentage, but an excellent title can draw me to a blog and blogger I have never heard of via a tweeter I don’t know — even to a blog that is obviously a promotional platform.

What do you need in your title?  Simple: read your post through and try to summarize it all into a sentence.  Don’t concern yourself like I do as to whether your title wraps on the blog when posts (it doesn’t matter) and also please do not bait and switch the content or stuff keywords that are no germane to the post.

And, it bears repeating, Google indexes 70 characters of each title tag so use them all, though some other services don’t so while you should use as many characters as you need to finish your thought, make sure your most important concepts are weighted towards the front of the title to make sure that the lead isn’t cut off in a retweet or share.

Let me know if you have other tips and tricks for getting folks to click through to your posts in a very competitive blogosphere and mediasphere.

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This humble blog made PRWeb’s 25 Essential PR Blogs list

I am so honored and humbled that I have been included in this most prestigious top-25 amongst the most incredible PR bloggers.  Thank you PR Web for including me! Congrats to my fellow PR bloggers for all your hard work in 2011 and good luck in 2012! Check out PRWeb‘s Public Relations Blogs – 25 Essential PR Bloggers You Should Be Reading!

25 essential pr blogs7 This humble blog made PRWebs 25 Essential PR Blogs list

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Paid, earned and owned media-marketing's modern love story

“Great stories and storytellers capture our emotions. The truth, is vital for brand marketers to understand because advertising at its best is storytelling.”

-Simon Bond, CMO BBDO and Proximity Worldwide

Real and powerful words right there. Especially since social media has changed the way that we tell stories. We tell them quicker, we’ve perfected the art of condensing information, but often we lose out on the emotion that the story of a brand can tell.

lovestory Paid, earned and owned media marketing's modern love story“What’s Your Story” was a recent Yahoo/BBDO experiment with the goal of understanding how consumers engage with brands today. More than 1,000 consumers and marketing pros explained their thoughts about brands and how they interact with them. The study found that 95% crave engagement on some level. “What’s Your Story” focused on the relationships between paid, earned and owned media, apparently now nicknamed “POE” in “modern Mad Men lingo.” Bond made the reference to characters in a love story. Let’s break down some of the elements.

The first date- Paid media. Traditional advertising. The primary source for information and just getting awareness out into the public.

Potential commitment- Owned media. Your Website, your app, your store. It’s at least four dates in. You’re pretty close to creating action by consumers. This is where you want to create interactive environments for your consumers, where they’ll feel important. Reward their loyalty or create something new that they’ve never seen before. Brand it as yours.

Going steady- (PS- where did this go? Boys…bring it back!) Earned media. Your consumers are sharing information willingly. They’re doing it through word-of-mouth, they’re texting each other, they’re tweeting, they’re doing it all– and it’s on their terms. The level where trust is built and it’s important for brands to be totally real and genuine. Yahoo!’s Vice Prez of Strategic Insights and Research Lauren Weinberg points out that brands will make mistakes. It’s given. The important tactic, is that they’re addressed.

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Paid, earned and owned media marketing's modern love story

Practical Secrets to Getting Your Blog Read and Retweeted

3150724610 e2b0f585e3 m3 Practical Secrets to Getting Your Blog Read and RetweetedLong blog post short: please be as descriptive as possible when titling your blog posts. In today’s decontextualized world of walls, feeds, RSS, e-mail, diggs, reddits, Stumbles, tweets, and retweets, you need to attract your potential reader based only on the appeal of your title and nothing else, especially if you’re new to blogging and don’t happen to be Seth Godin.

Use up to the 70 characters that Google indexes for each post title but make sure the most important message of the title are nearer the beginning of the title. Don’t bury the lead in the post and don’t bury the lead in the title, either.

Tweetmeme and other sharing services chop off long titles, so while you can go long, keep your essentials right at the beginning.

A good title is a good habit — here’s why

Recently I wrote the post Blog so you can be taken completely out of context in which I discussed how essential it is to make sure each blog post you write needs to be completely self-contained and self-referential. Looking back, I notice I missed the most important part of every blog post: the blog title.

In 2011, with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, retweets, sharing, and RSS via Google Reader, all anyone ever sees is the title of whatever’s shared, especially if you’re not Beth Kanter, Kami Huyse, Seth Godin, CC Chapman, Shel Israel, Geoff Livingston, Richard Laermer, Olivier Blanchard, Christopher Penn, Chris Brogan or Brian Solis. If you’re one of these bloggers, your title is a little less important; however, your name may well be stripped by the confines of a 140-character world, so a good title is a good habit even for our hallowed celebrities since their personal brand doesn’t always move as fast as the share.

So, though we’re all tempted to indulge in puns, in humor, in wordplay, and in breezy cool, please try to keep put your editor hat on every time you post to your blog. Who, what, when, where, why, and how. Five Ws and an H.

Also, remember that the title you choose needs to be both appealing, compelling, accurate, and trustworthy to both your human readers and also to machines: the spiders and bots that Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, Bing, and the other search engines send to visit your blogs and everyone else’s shares.

I hate it that WordPress asks for a title first because the title should be one of the last things you provide. I like to save my summary paragraph and my final title until the last minute and two of my editors — JD Lasica, here, and Mike Moran of Biznology — almost always provide my posts with even more focused titles and summary paragraphs. Of course, these two gems are reformed journalists, so I benefit greatly from their experience.

For this post, I chose “The big secret to getting people to read your blog,” though I would have loved to choose something more cheeky like “All you got is your title” or “You need to have them at hello” or “Bait your blog post with a great title.” But in the end, straightforward wins.

I know how I consume blogs, Twitter, and my Facebook wall, and 70% of my click-throughs are based on the title of the post. Another 20% is based on the person who does the sharing — including the blogger — and the final 10% is the blog it’s on, such a Mashable. That’s my percentage, but an excellent title can draw me to a blog and blogger I have never heard of via a tweeter I don’t know — even to a blog that is obviously a promotional platform.

Coming up with the essence of what your blog post is about

What do you need in your title? Simple: Read your post through and try to summarize it all into a sentence. Don’t concern yourself like I do as to whether your title wraps on the blog when posts (it doesn’t matter) and also please do not bait and switch the content or stuff keywords that are not germane to the post.

And, it bears repeating, Google indexes 70 characters of each title tag, so use as many relevant characters as possible. However, some other services don’t, so while you should use as many characters as you need to finish your thought, make sure your most important concepts are weighted towards the front of the title to make sure that the lead isn’t cut off in a retweet or share.

Do you have other tips and tricks for getting folks to click through to your posts? It’s a competitive blogosphere and mediasphere out there!

Via Biznology via Socialmedia.biz viaMarketing Conversation

Practical Secrets to Getting Your Blog Read and Retweeted

The secret to getting people to read your blog now!

3150724610 e2b0f585e3 m The secret to getting people to read your blog now!Long blog post short: please be as descriptive as possible when titling your blog posts. In today’s decontextualized world of walls, feeds, RSS, e-mail, diggs, reddits, Stumbles, tweets, and retweets, you need to attract your potential reader based only on the appeal of your title and nothing else, especially if you’re new to blogging and don’t happen to be Seth Godin.

Use up to the 70 characters that Google indexes for each post title but make sure the most important message of the title are nearer the beginning of the title. Don’t bury the lead in the post and don’t bury the lead in the title, either.

Tweetmeme and other sharing services chop off long titles, so while you can go long, keep your essentials right at the beginning.

A good title is a good habit — here’s why

Recently I wrote the post Blog so you can be taken completely out of context in which I discussed how essential it is to make sure each blog post you write needs to be completely self-contained and self-referential. Looking back, I notice I missed the most important part of every blog post: the blog title.

In 2011, with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, retweets, sharing, and RSS via Google Reader, all anyone ever sees is the title of whatever’s shared, especially if you’re not Beth Kanter, Kami Huyse, Seth Godin, CC Chapman, Shel Israel, Geoff Livingston, Richard Laermer, Olivier Blanchard, Christopher Penn, Chris Brogan or Brian Solis. If you’re one of these bloggers, your title is a little less important; however, your name may well be stripped by the confines of a 140-character world, so a good title is a good habit even for our hallowed celebrities since their personal brand doesn’t always move as fast as the share.

So, though we’re all tempted to indulge in puns, in humor, in wordplay, and in breezy cool, please try to keep put your editor hat on every time you post to your blog. Who, what, when, where, why, and how. Five Ws and an H.

Also, remember that the title you choose needs to be both appealing, compelling, accurate, and trustworthy to both your human readers and also to machines: the spiders and bots that Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, Bing, and the other search engines send to visit your blogs and everyone else’s shares.

I hate it that WordPress asks for a title first because the title should be one of the last things you provide. I like to save my summary paragraph and my final title until the last minute and two of my editors — JD Lasica, here, and Mike Moran of Biznology — almost always provide my posts with even more focused titles and summary paragraphs. Of course, these two gems are reformed journalists, so I benefit greatly from their experience.

For this post, I chose “The big secret to getting people to read your blog,” though I would have loved to choose something more cheeky like “All you got is your title” or “You need to have them at hello” or “Bait your blog post with a great title.” But in the end, straightforward wins.

I know how I consume blogs, Twitter, and my Facebook wall, and 70% of my click-throughs are based on the title of the post. Another 20% is based on the person who does the sharing — including the blogger — and the final 10% is the blog it’s on, such a Mashable. That’s my percentage, but an excellent title can draw me to a blog and blogger I have never heard of via a tweeter I don’t know — even to a blog that is obviously a promotional platform.

Coming up with the essence of what your blog post is about

What do you need in your title? Simple: Read your post through and try to summarize it all into a sentence. Don’t concern yourself like I do as to whether your title wraps on the blog when posts (it doesn’t matter) and also please do not bait and switch the content or stuff keywords that are not germane to the post.

And, it bears repeating, Google indexes 70 characters of each title tag, so use as many relevant characters as possible. However, some other services don’t, so while you should use as many characters as you need to finish your thought, make sure your most important concepts are weighted towards the front of the title to make sure that the lead isn’t cut off in a retweet or share.

Do you have other tips and tricks for getting folks to click through to your posts? It’s a competitive blogosphere and mediasphere out there!

Via Biznology via Socialmedia.biz

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The secret to getting people to read your blog now!