Successful Blog

Great Headlines on the Web Always Win … Except When They Don't

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how to blog series

Got Traffic? Want Traffic?
Why Do the Clickers Come?

If you’ve been studying How to Get Literally Everyone’s Attention on the Internet, you probably know that headlines count.

An attention-grabbing headline is everything. Whether it is something completely original and novel, ultra-specific and geared towards a niche, or just incredibly compelling, good headlines on the Web always win.

They always win, except when they don’t.

A great headline will get traffic and attention, but what sticks? What turns a click into a subscriber? Strong businesses are built on strong relationships. What transforms a clicker into someone who hangs around?

It starts with with the reason the clickers came. People come to a website for information, entertainment, and communication / engagement. When they click through on that headline they’re looking for one or more of those three.

Our greatest achievement in building a Web site is helping a person achieve his or her goal. During our research our biggest discovery proved to be that navigation and content work best when they are wed tightly together. “It seems that you can t really separate content and navigation” says Jarod Spool, “without losing something important in the process.” How to make your Web site fast and usable

If folks who click find something that delivers on that promise in that headline they stay and possibly return. If not, they feel thwarted and leave. Here are five things you can do to make it more likely they get what they came for.

Five Ways to Deliver to the Clickers Who Follow a Headline to Your Blog …

  1. Deliver what your headline promises.
  2. Deliver it in short paragraphs using subheads surrounded by lots of white space so that people have room to think and breathe.
  3. Deliver it without making folks jump over ads or through hoops to get to the prize that the headline promises.
  4. Deliver it by recognizing the people who take time to comment.
  5. Deliver it by making it easy for folks to stay..

The most important thing is deliver — do what we say we’re going to do.

It’s not the click that doesn’t come that’s a loss. It’s the click that comes to find that we’re not what we suggested we would be. A great headline followed by something less doesn’t win. It doesn’t even finish.

Great headline, lame blog post — you’ve been there. What’s your response when you end up on one of those?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Australian Coffee and Australian Wine … What Dream Have You Left Waiting?

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Every week Suzie and Des send the most amazing thoughts and photographs from the beaches of OZ. The small missives they send may be just slightly more meaningful because of a dream I carry to return to the beaches I walked there 8 years ago.

Time for a 7-year-old Dream Now?

I started writing this in 2005. This dream was four years old then. I still think about it more often than I might. It waits until more important things hit zero balance. That could take a few more minutes … Usually I don’t talk about it.

I don’t need vacations. At least I don’t lack for places to visit. I don’t spend lots of time thinking about things that aren’t on the schedule to be happening yet. But maybe it’s time that I start doing so.

If I did, I’d be planning to go to Australia. I’d see friends that I miss. We’d reminisce of times passed. We’d plan new times to come. We’d drink Australian coffee and have Australian wine.

I’d choose the coffee shop across the street from Bondi Beach — a table by the window where I could watch the people. I’d have my laptop on the table and fine Australian coffee with those narrow packs of sugar. What a writer I would feel like. What a writer I would be.

My friends would visit me there.

We would drink Australian coffee. I do like Australian coffee.

We’d road trip up the cliff with Australian wine and cheese, to watch the boats in the harbor and talk of Captain Cook — new memories to hold me over until the next time.

And we would drink Australian wine. I do like Australian wine.

A night walk by the Sydney Harbor bridge. I can’t resist the lights on the water. I’d be thinking wishes that could hug a moment into stillness.

Mostly, though I’d be with my Australian friends. The ones I knew before I came online and the ones that I’ve met since. It’s not right always hoping folks will come to me.

Five tiny diamond chips like tiny stars are mine. Two yellow, two pink, one white. They hold a promise I’ll return to see mu Australian friends. Five stars inside a tiny boomerang. I wear it on a chain since before my last visit in 2001.

I don’t need vacations. I need safe harbor with my friends.

Maybe it’s time I dust off that dream and find good reason to be tasting some Australian coffee and Australia wine.

What dream have you to left waiting? How will you know when it’s time?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Thanks to Week 186 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SOB Business Cafe 05-15-09

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

The Buzz Bin
Dale Carnegie’s principles have stood the test of time because they are about fostering better relations amongst people. And the classic mistake with social media is to treat it like a mass communications vehicle, when it’s a conversational form that builds relationships. Social media is about a larger community and its concerns, as opposed to a litany of messages. There is no better set of guidelines for this then “Friends.”

A VC
The WSJ gave its journalists some rules about conduct in social media this week according to Editor and Publisher.

Most of them are good common sense rules for everyone using social media. But there are several that I think are wrong and should be rethought. Here are four “rules” that I think should be reconsidered and why.

Mashable
But there’s so much info and chatter coming in through social media that it can overwhelm you, eat up your time, and ruin your productivity.

Simplifying will help you stay in touch, and continue to participate in the conversation, without losing sight of your mission and the important work you need to get done.

Social Media Explorer
Last week, David and I got the opportunity to hear Geno Church of Brains on Fire speak about word of mouth marketing and social media, courtesy the Louisville AMA and Social Media Club Louisville. He ended the presentation with the story of the role social media played in a pivotal, scary event in his own life as a parent. It got the gears turning in my head.

Marketing Pilgrim
Fizzle in 2009
If you’ve not stopped popping champagne since we published Forrester’s predictions for social media marketing, you might need the Alka-Seltzer after you see eMarketer’s contrary estimates.

Related ala carte selections include

Chrisg
All around the world people are very excited about Social Media Success Summit 2009 — the first major online event dedicated to helping you successfully market your business with sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. More than 500 people have already registered. Now you have the exclusive chance to win two valuable seats to the event for no cost!

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Gardening, Blogging, Life, Comments and How Relationships Stay Made

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The Authenticity of Gardening … and Blogging

When I was a luxury farmer, I brought in bark mulch by the truck load. I had conversations with dirt that was so dry that you had to wet it to call it dust. It made be feel like a cowboy. It made me feel like a king. I could put my hand in the dirt, work for hours. Then through some miracle of nature color would happen. Things would grow. Not right way. Oh no. It took longer than blog years, but suddenly in the sun things started to show.

Every year we the weather gets warm and my hands want to be playing in the dirt I’m reminded that all things I’ve ever done have happened because I was willing to spend the time they took.

A blog. A garden. A life.

No one does them for the comments really.

But the comments sure do feel good.

Would you leave one for me now and then go leave one for those you know who’ve been working hard?

I’d so appreciate it and so would they. It’s how relationships start and how they stay made.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Why Hire the Blog When You Can Hire the the Brain Behind It?

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A Photograph or a Photographer?

This week, I sat with a client who sings with an elite choir. The quality of what they do is outstanding. They’re known for loving attention to every detail. When they sing Russian opera, they study the deep meaning of the words, not merely clear pronunciation. It comes through in every blissful sound they blend, share, and offer. Their musical director is exceptional. Their production staff is to die for. Their board is prestigious and powerful.

The music they make is heavenly.

But aside from an occasional sale to a friend in Japan and the many CDs sold go to friends and supporters. The choir is hardly known outside of their personal and professional network.

That’s why my client was meeting with me.

“I was thinking we should use the Internet. I thought maybe a piece of your blog or some others,” he said.

I said, “What do you want for the choir? What’s your goal?

He told me without hesitation. “We should have a grammy — more than one.”

“You could do that. You’ll reach my audience and they’ll love you. But I’d like to suggest something more and more lasting. Why not build an audience of your own?”

Hire the Brain Behind the Blog

Often first conversations with clients start with how to get their information on many influential blogs. That leads to discussions of buying, renting, or borrowing bloggers’ influence, determining the right audiences, and how much information on the Internet is misstated, misdirected, or outright ignored.

Boring products need to be “pushed” or “seeded” into the market.
Compelling valuable resources don’t.
One look at Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or FriendFeed shows that we like to share great things with our friends. Susan Boyle’s YouTube video is an example of great content that didn’t need to be pushed or seeded. It felt good to share it. It made us feel part of something bigger than ourselves.

Using those thoughts and basic strategy — start with the reachable and move out with purpose and logic — we scoped out the existing and realistic possibilities. The plan my choir friend and I started looked something like this one.

Great word of mouth depends on three things:

  1. The product has to be outstanding — and the vision has to be clear.
  2. The way to share it has to easy, growing from the community’s natural connections.
  3. People need to feel proud that they were part of the process.

It sure seemed that my choir client had step 1 — an outstanding product and vision — covered. We moved on to the strategy for building out the community and letting them enjoy the process. We set out to make it easy, meaningful, and about the folks who would help. We were building a movement more than a strategy.

  • Start at Home.. Identify the offline network the choir already reaches. Determine best ways to leverage and expand it — keep the offline connections strong and growing. Keep the offline community engaged and participating in fun, meaningful ways.
  • Learn from, Listen to and Engage the Energy. Find and have dinner with the champions of the choir in the offline community who are already engaged in online social endeavors related to music, the choir, and possible connections for the choir.
  • Let the Leaders Lead. Join and enlist their armies and networks. Let those champions lead their own initiatives in the name of the choir.
  • Momentum Drives Building. Using what we know of our network and their skills, now is finally the time to put up build and release that YouTube video of the choir. They’ll already be part of the endeavor and their armies will know about it when it goes up. Sharing will be fun.
  • Celebrating and Sharing Are Natural. Our friends on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and the music sites we’re already on will be delighted to hear about it too.
  • Reporting Results. At the end, what we about on our blogs will have the power of our community as well as the single event.

And we’ll be well on our way to a network, a community that loves the choir, not one that was borrowed from a network of blogs.

You can hire the blog or you can hire the brain behind it.

It’s a matter of short-term or longer-term thinking.

Do you look at your blogger relationships as a chance to tap into new strategic ideas?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn how conversation is changing the way business works.