How to make your headlines social media friendly

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Since lots of your traffic may come from social media and social networking websites through plenty of sharing and re-tweeting you need to create your web page and blog post headlines/titles keeping that in mind. Here is a nice post on Making your web content headlines more shareable.

Of course in order to create enough incentive for sharing your content you need to deliver some value.

With that out of the way, the blog post linked above rightly says that keep the number of characters in your headline to the minimum because re-tweeting adds more characters to the update and considering there are just 140 characters you can post on Twitter at a time, the real estate is quite precious. Nick has recommended 80 characters but it depends on the underlying message you want to deliver through your headline. Sometimes I pay special attention to creating smaller and succinct headlines/titles and sometimes I don’t care much. It’s not that I want to make things difficult for people who want to share my content via Twitter, it’s just that when they really want to share the content, they can come up with their own ingenious ways (even to the extent of creating their own shorter headlines – I do that sometimes with other people’s content). The objective here is not creating headlines to facilitate easier sharing, it is making your overall content shareable enough.

Another important topic touched upon in the blog post is the relevancy and topical significance of your headline. How relevant is the headline to the current and ongoing mood among your followers? It must satisfy a need and preferably some pressing, current requirement. It also depends on your audience and basically what it is looking for.

For instance, most of the content appearing on my blog deals with content writing, content marketing and content strategy. This is an ongoing topic and it doesn’t deliver instant results (although in many cases it might). It is an ongoing education. It is reference material that you can use again and again or as you need. People share it if they find it useful, rather than compelling. They also share it/re-tweet it when they agree with it or don’t agree with it.

So shareability of your headline depends

The convenience of sharing it (it’s size)
Its relevance
Its topical significance
The manner in which it imparts a message (short, succinct and compelling)
Your social media presence

The last point is also important. Simply creating great content and compelling headlines isn’t going to make people share your content with their friends and followers. They need to be familiar with you, they need to be comfortable with your presence and they should know that in more than 70% posts you deliver quality content.

The benefits of having a Google +1 button on your website

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Although this has got nothing directly to do with content writing and content marketing, since it can help my clients I have decided to write on this topic. Frankly, I haven’t really started using Google Plus as regularly as I use Facebook and Twitter, but the Google +1 button is slightly different from the social networking platform Google is trying to promote.

What is the Google +1 button?

You can see the Google +1 button on the top of this blog post (most probably on the right hand side at the top).

It can be used like a “thumbs up” act by your visitors. If you’re familiar with how the Digg button works, with every click, the number of people who have “plussed” your link increases. On Digg, the more diggs you have, the better is your chance of getting on Digg.com homepage and all of sudden increasing traffic to your website by hundreds of thousands. I am personally not very impressed with the sort of traffic you get from Digg.com but that is just a difference of opinion I guess.

The Google +1 button achieves almost the same thing, but instead of helping you get to the homepage of Digg.com, it helps you improve your search engine rankings. It is something like page rank: the more “trusted” websites and blogs link to you, the better your search engine rankings get.

The Google +1 button is a step closer to “humanizing” search engine results. So far, almost all the search engines have depended on ranking algorithms to rank various links. Although these algorithms are mathematically sound, after all they are algorithms, and whenever you have algorithms, people can devise workarounds.

But if actual human beings start recommending web pages and blog posts by clicking on the Google +1 button it increases their relevance in the real sense. Then Google doesn’t have to depend much on its algorithms and its search engine results are more validated and relevant. So if you have a Google +1 button on your website, you are allowing your visitors to help you improve your search engine rankings. When they click on your Google +1 button they recommend your link to Google.com – “Rank this link well, it is definitely good!”

It is like “social search”. This concept has been introduced by many newcomer search engines.

Some even say Google.com immediately crawls your web page and indexes it the moment you install the Google +1 button on it. I’m not particularly sure of that. Anyway, if you regularly publish content on your website or blog, your content gets indexed within a few seconds or a few minutes of the new content appearing on your website or blog.

Another benefit of having a Google +1 button on your website or blog

The Google +1 button also allows you to post the link you are presently on directly to your Google Plus profile. It is like, Facebook or Twitter plug-in that allows you to straightaway post the link under your profile.

How to install a Google +1 button on your website or blog

The direct way to install the Google +1 button is by heading to the official Google webpage dedicated to the button. This page has code snippets that you need to insert into your website. The first code snippet is for the button to appear wherever you want it to appear, and the second code snippet is the required JavaScript that you will be putting within the <head></head> section of your website.

If you manage your blog or website with WordPress (as I do) you can simply install a plug-in to display the Google +1 button. This is not the only recommended plug-in – you can use whatever you prefer. If you’re using a social media plug-in as you can see on the left hand side of this blog post, it might already be coming up preloaded with the Google +1 one button feature.

Here is a small video on the Google +1 one button (from Google.com):

Difference between content writing and content curation

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There are basically 2 ways you can generate quality content for your website or blog:

Content writing/generating fresh content
Curating quality content from other reliable sources

The benefits of creating new content

By constantly creating new content and publishing it on your website or blog you establish your authority on the subject. You get to share your own knowledge, your own experience and your own expertise. Writing and publishing your own content is a very good way of building online intellectual wealth that not only helps your visitors but also helps you.

It also makes you an independent knowledge resource. When you’re generating your own content you don’t need to depend on external links, and to be frank, external links cannot always be relied upon. I remember when there was a big earthquake in Japan a very prominent website published an info-graphic comprehensively explaining how to survive an earthquake. I had linked to that info-graphic from one of my blog posts. Recently when there was a big earthquake in north-eastern India I wanted to share the same link. But when I visited it, it directed me to another, irrelevant (full of affiliate links) URL. The original info-graphic has been removed. Had I had the same info-graphic on my own website at least it would have been still there.

Obviously, the search engines are constantly looking for original content to index and rank and the more original content you publish the more advantage you get in this arena.

Original content writing is also a showcase of your communication skill. You are not simply providing information to your visitors just to gain traffic; you are actually putting in effort to create quality content.

The benefits of content curation or curating quality content

The biggest benefit of content curation is you can share high-quality content with your visitors without having to create it. Normally what people do is, create a quick synopsis of the original link, publish it as a paragraph and in the end append the original link.

Does it help your search engine rankings? Surely it does, provided you stick to the core theme. Suppose I decide to create a blog post solely having quality links on content writing. If there are 10 links in my blog post it means I’m going to write 10-12 paragraphs on the topic of content writing in order to briefly explain every link. So targeted content plus high-quality outgoing links (and in the form of trackbacks you may also get some juicy incoming links) can do wonders to your search engine rankings.

Content curation is a great way to create link bait opportunities because often it is difficult to get high-value content at a single place. If all the 10 links on content writing I’m linking to have great value people are going to link to my blog post as a valuable resource and they are also going to share it using their social media profiles.

What is good, content writing or content curation?

Both are important, I would say. There can be no content curation without original content so somebody has to write and publish original content and only then it can be curated.

The Internet can be chaotic as well as intimidating with millions of webpages and blog posts vying for your attention at a particular instance. So if you can find a single webpage or a blog post that has lots of links collected from different reliable sources it can help you tremendously.

Does content curation help your business?

Whether content curation helps your business or not depends on your business model. There are lots of blogs that simply publish lists gathered from various other blogs and websites (for instance, a web design blog curating web design links from scores of blogs and websites, just dealing with designing the top navigation bar).

As a personal advise I would recommend a 70-30 ratio. If you publish 10 webpages or blog posts every month and you also want to curate content, you should try posting 7 original posts and 3 collected links.contact

The Importance of Web Page Titles

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Of late I’ve noticed many of my clients are not particularly aware of the importance of web page titles. Many have just “Home”, “Services”, etc. as their web page titles. They either don’t know what they are, or even if they know, they don’t know their significance.

What is a web page title?

Modern browsers like Google Chrome and the latest versions of Mozilla FireFox don’t show the web page title text in the window title bar so may be that’s why many people don’t know of their existence. Luckily I found the web page title visible in Internet Explorer; here is what I mean:

Web page title in Internet Explorer

If you look at the source code of your web page, your title appears within <title></title> within the <head></head> area.

Why is your web page title important?

It is your web page title that makes your web page or blog post unique. When people automatically link to your web page it’s your title that becomes your representative text. Here’s why you need a well-defined, convincing web page title:

Search engines use your web page title. The search engines not only use your web page title to rank it (it should contain your primary keyword) they also show it as the hyperlink text when your web page shows up on their search result pages. It has been proven there is a greater probability of people clicking the link and coming to your web page if the link contains the keyword or key phrase they have just used.
Bookmarking tools use your web page title. When people bookmark your web page it is saved using your title. The next time people want to come back to your web page after looking it up in their saved bookmarks they’ll be able to identify it only by the title. Similarly bookmarking and link sharing websites like Delicious and StumbleUpon use your web page title to organize information.
Social media tools use your web page title. Have you ever tried to post a link using a social media plug-in? It is the title of the web page that accompanies the link/URL. If there is no accompanying title there is no way of finding out what the link represents and hence people will not share it on their social media profiles.
TrackBack services use your web page title. Services that automatically index the web and look for relevant pages look for your web page title to create indexes.
It’s easier for people to connect to your web page if it has a well-defined title. Everybody realizes the importance of quality incoming links and you will be basically discouraging people from linking to your important pages by not including a title. If a title is missing it forces people to come up with their own titles and this acts as a deterrence. Provide them a title so that they can quickly lead to your web page.
Your compelling web page title encourages social media sharing. It is your web page title that makes people share your link with their friends and followers. No matter how interesting information your web page contains, unless your web page title doesn’t carry the most important aspect of your web page it is not going to be shared.

So you can see, despite being just a single line of text, or important your web page title is.

But it is not that all the clients don’t understand the overwhelming importance of web page titles. There are many clients who are actually eager to pay extra for creating SEO-friendly and compelling web-page titles.

How to fire up your web content strategy

What do you want your web content strategy to achieve?

This is a very important question. Don’t simply publish content on your website just because your competitors are doing that. For an effective web content strategy you must need to know what you’re achieving and what are your long-term and short-term goals vis-à-vis publishing content on your website. Do you want to

Improve your search engine rankings by publishing keyword-rich content?
Make your prospective customers and clients more aware of your products and services?
Make your prospective and current customers and clients more aware of the overwhelming benefits of your products and services?
Want to keep your visitors engaged?
Strengthen your brand presence?
Rake up socially relevant issues?
Educate and inform your visitors so that they can make better decisions regarding what they should be buying and investing their money in?

Frankly, there can be 1000s of questions you can ask yourself before publishing content but the basic idea is, you should know precisely why you are publishing. The more clear you are, the better direction you will have.

What sort of audience you want to cater to through your web content strategy?

Last year I partnered with a client who wanted to address an audience who remains at the forefront of technology: people who would buy the first iPhone or the iPad or who would start using a pioneering service without waiting for someone else. For instance, people who started using Facebook and Twitter in their early years. The direction of the content was totally different.

So before going ahead with your web content strategy you must know who you’re talking to on a daily basis and then produce content accordingly.

What format of content your audience prefers?

I am a content writer but this doesn’t mean I always recommend text as the most preferred format of producing and publishing content. Different types of content formats can play a crucial role in your overall web content strategy such as video, audio-visual, audio, graphics, images, presentations, slideshows, and of course, text. The format of your content depends on your audience preference and the devices they use. If your audience prefers reading, by all means provide text. If they are more visual types then provide them images and graphics. If their devices can handle streaming video and they prefer that, then provide it.

Make sure that you stay away from the “me too” approach. Just because an XYZ website uses video doesn’t mean that you should use it too. Maybe it works for them, maybe it will, or maybe it won’t for you, or maybe it doesn’t even work for them but they still use it. It’s important to understand what format actually clicks for you and then produce plenty of it.

What channels you use to spread your content?

No matter how outstanding content you’re producing unless people know about it they are neither going to consume it nor promote it. You need to spread your content using proper channels. It can be your website/blog that enjoys lots of traffic. It can be your social media profiles such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. It can be Youtube if video is your primary content format. Nurture different channels and then use them to engage your audience and distribute your content.

How do you track the performance of your web content strategy?

Without tracking performance you are simply throwing darts in the darkness. You need to know whether your web content strategy is delivering or not. Although you won’t have enough data to analyze within a couple of weeks, and you need some ground for scientific analysis, once that initial hurdle is crossed, you need to constantly evaluate how your content performs with different parameters.

You can analyze individual webpages/blog posts in terms of

How much traffic they were able to generate
What important keywords and key phrases they were able to attract traffic for
How many people retweeted and shared them
How many people left comments
How many people explored further pages of your website after entering through those particular pages/blog posts
How many back links were they able to generate, etc.

Please note that these webpages and blog posts may also have indirect effects such as getting you more Twitter followers and Facebook likes and there are surely tools to measure even these indirect effects.

In the end, web content strategy is not your backyard activity. It requires lots of effort, understanding of your own market and figuring out a slew of different matrices.