Successful Blog

5 Powerful Tips For Writing Irresistible Headlines

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How to Blog Series

by
Ali Abbas

Do you want more people to read what you write?
Do you want more subscribers to your blog?
Write irresistible headlines!

It’s that simple.

5 Powerful Tips For Writing Irresistible Headlines

Writing headlines is a craft; practice, and practice more to sharpen your skills.
In addition to practice, read about writing headlines regularly to make sure your skills don’t get rusty.

This post offers 5 powerful tips about crafting headlines. You might already know some of these, but one or two will surely make you slap your forehead. Others might sound absurd. But believe me they will go a long way if you employ them.

1. Write the headline first

The temptation is to write the headline after you’ve written the whole piece. Why not – you can write a better headline when the copy is there in front of you, right?
Wrong!

Headline is a promise.

You make promises before you fulfill them. Your headline is the same.
If you save the headline for last, after writing the monstrous copy, you’ll want to write the darn headline quickly and be done with it. That’s not how to blog effectively.

If the headline doesn’t get the required attention, it won’t bring the desired results — the people who are perfect for what you offer.

2. Highlight the biggest benefit

Most readers don’t come to find out what you do or why you do it. They are interested in things that make their life easier and better, save them time, make them money, make them healthy or beautiful.

Tell readers in the headline what your text will do for them.

3. Length doesn’t matter

Many so-called gurus preach that shorter headlines work better.
Nonsense!

14-word headlines can get as much readership as 3-word headlines.
Length isn’t as important as getting your message across.

It, however, is better to keep the title under 70 characters (including spaces) on the internet. Longer titles get truncated by the search engines which can ruin your most powerful headline.

4. Don’t try to be tricky

Don’t try to be over smart when writing your headlines. Hundreds of thousands headlines are competing against you. Readers are too busy to figure out what the heck you are trying to say with unfathomable mumbo jumbo. They will simply click another link — one with a clear benefit.

5. Don’t write incomplete headlines

I had a personal experience with this a few days ago.

Traffic was jammed and I, being bored to death, was looking indifferently at the surroundings. My eyeballs got fixed at two advertising posters of rival two telecommunication companies, posted on wall end-to-end. Their headlines read as follows:

I. The Treasure (Say by Company A)
II. Make Free Calls For The Next 24 Hours (Say by Company B)

I ignored the first headline wondering “a telecom company and treasure, what the heck” and the traffic had just started to move slowly, so I didn’t have the time to read the rest of the ad.

The second headline was imprinted on the back of my mind. Later on, I came to know that the Company A offered better value, but by then I had already purchased the services of company B.

Never use headlines that require reading the rest of the advertisement to be understood. Readers will quit at that very point. They have no reason to read on. Readers on the internet read too quickly to keep on reading to find out what you are trying to say.

What it all boils down to is…

To apply the marketing wisdom of P.T. Barnum:

“You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.”

The sole purpose of a headline is to attract people who are most interested in your offer. Follow these 5 powerful tips for writing irresistible headlines. Ignoring them is simply wasting your time as well as money. Prove it to yourself!

What rules do you follow when writing headlines? Share in the comments.

Author’s Bio:
Ali Abbas is a freelance writer and blogging enthusiast. At the Writers Blog (), he shares his innovative ideas for starting a real, sustainable and profitable online writing career. To learn more about writing headlines, download his FREE Report: Secret Ingredients To Writing Killer Headlines That Always Get Noticed.

How to Be Passionate

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Christine Kane

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Stay Passionate

I have found that it is difficult to stay passionate in this busy world. Our attention changes so frequently that we forget what it is like to focus in on one thing at a time. We forget what it is like to really love what we are doing at the moment, with a single minded attention. We forget how to be passionate.

As a writer, I get burnt out. I have to write about this over here and that over there and research thins topic and find out information and quotes about that one. I just get sick of thinking. I get sick of coming up with new ideas all the time, or regurgitating the old ones in creative ways. I just fry.

That is when I know it is time to take a break. I need a vacation. I need to center and get back to myself. When I am writing not because I am passionate but because I have to, my writing is going to suffer – guaranteed.

But how can you regain your passion? How can you get passion in the first place? Isn’t it something you just fall into or are born with? Well, no, not really. I think of passion like I think of love. True love.

How to Be Passionate

Cultivate passion.

  1. Passion is a choice – Like love, passion is not something you fall into. Yes, you can lust and you can be attracted to a person, just like you can be attracted to certain topics. But to really be ‘in love’ requires that a choice be made. A choice to move beyond “this feels good” to “I will work to make this always feel good”.
  2. Passion requires concentration – Like love, passion requires your attention. Passion will run at the slightest opportunity. It will flutter away the moment you take your eyes off it. Like a lover left alone too long, the passion will flee if left unattended or ignored. Do not get caught up in the distractions of life, the other topics you may be ‘attracted’ to, and forget your love.
  3. Passion requires feeding – Not only do you have to give your passion your regular attention, but you also have to feed it. You have to add more knowledge, growing deeper every day in your topic. Like a lover, you must learn more about them daily. See what they are thinking and feeling, and find out their needs and desires. Only then will the passion stay.
  4. Passion needs a break – This all sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? Well, it is. That is why, sometimes passion needs a break. Like a night out with friends, passion can handle some time apart, as long as it is limited. That does not mean you get to cheat on passion. No finding any other topics while you are away, okay? But you do get to give your body and brain a break and come back refreshed.
  5. Passion changes – Last but not least, passion changes. Like any relationship, nothing stays the same forever. Eventually you will focus on one area of your passion, becoming all the more involved in that. Other parts will fall away and be replaced. You passion can gradually change into something entirely different, and yet still the same. Like growing old with a mate, passion can change and be familiar, can get old and yet be no less loved.

Passion is universal. In love, in friendships, and in writing, passion is necessary to keep things vital and alive. Passionate work is the only work that will stay with you. It is the only work that you will ever really love. Others may not agree, but you know what you have written in passion is the best work you have ever done. Do not let go of that. Cling to passion and keep it lit. That is the way to keep your love for writing.

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Author’s Bio:
Christine Kane is a graduate of Communication and Journalism. She enjoys writing about life, writing, and all things web, including internet service and you’ll find her on a variety of blogs.

Thank you, Christine! Great tips for keeping passion in writing and in life.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blog Branding versus Blog Marketing

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Blogging is all about being personal.

It may sound too simple that anyone will understand it not more than a personal online diary. Hence, let me just explain a little bit for you to understand from another perspective.

I may not be the expert to give you an educational answer about branding and marketing. But in my opinion, if anyone can understand the difference between branding and marketing, that person will definitely understand the true meaning of being personal.

Both marketing and branding have different goals. Let me just explain to you in my own understanding after working for a while in the society.

What is blog marketing?

Marketing aims to effect an eventual sales transaction. Hence, it gives the person an instant gratification as he/she tries to tell the world who he or she is. It is very similar to a person who is devoting himself/herself to be extremely sales-driven. He or she will go out there to tell the world through Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, LinkedIn or any other social media that he/she can reach.

What is blog branding?

Branding aims to communicate by means of “impressing” what this blogger stands for. It is not so much about looking out for maximum exposure. But rather, it leaves an impression to anyone who notices him/her.

This blogger will usually focus a lot on building quality contents, beautifying his or her blog design, and making sure that everybody perceives him/her as who he or she really “is.” Isn’t blog branding about “being personal”?

Marketing versus branding

Some experts believe that perception is everything. Branding — which shapes perception — leads everything!

Some believe that marketing is the key to business viability, especially when it involves product development, market development, channel development, sales force management, etc. Thus, it is more directly impacting revenue.

Both marketing and branding aim to affect higher profitability. In general, marketing has a wider effect but lesser depth (volume, sales, etc). Branding on the other hand usually tries to enable clients to pay a “premium.”

Mix and match your marketing and branding

Both are really important in its own way. While marketing is pretty straight-forward and is more like a how-to strategy, I wish to emphasize on this phrase “blogging is all about being personal.”

Author’s Bio: This post was written by Charles. He has been an Internet reviewer since June 2007. He pours his passion for Internet marketing and Internet branding into his Twitter account actively at @charleslau.

Fighting the Stress of Blogging by Staying Fit

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Blogging was never meant to be an activity that contributes to your stress (in fact it was supposed to be the opposite) but somehow, it is becoming more and more stressful, given the competition and how much more challenging blogging has actually become.

If you are about to start a blog, and you’re inspired by the stories of bloggers who started blogging as a pastime some years ago, and now they are making hundreds and thousands of dollars from their blogs (if they are to be believed), please beware that it is not going to be the case when you launch a blog in this time and age. Sorry to break it to you, but while it was easy to hit the jackpot with little or no effort some time ago, now the internet in general, and blogosphere in specific is turning more and more vicious, and jumping into the red ocean (read: Blue Ocean Strategy) and coming face to face with the big fish is going to be quite tiresome, if not destructive.

To cut a long story short, full time blogging, especially when you are doing it for the sole purpose of making money, can be quite stressful and unhealthy for following reasons.

  • A succession of Panda updates have disposed all of those easy content generation techniques (e.g. spinning or re-phrasing news or others’ articles) and now you need to spend quite some time, and do a lot of thinking to create fresh and unique content on regular basis. And all that time in front of PC with little or no physical activity can result in obesity, weight gain, poor diet, and bad health in general
  • Getting your blog to the top of Google’s results for your desired keywords (AKA SEO) is getting more and more difficult
  • To make the most of your blog, you will have to promote it on all available platforms including(but is not limited to) Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, optimizing for search engines, and other blogs via guest blogging, and again, it can take quite some time and efforts
  • Staying in front of your PC or laptop for long hours and pushing your mind all the time for more and more ideas can contribute to stress and even mild depression in some cases
  • Sitting all the time in front of your PC or laptop will result in bad posture and a seriously out of shape figure, you might even end up gaining weight, and all these ailments will definitely add to your stress
  • Going through your fellow bloggers’ experiences and success stories (even if some of them are nothing but hyperbole), you will feel quite disheartened, especially if your own blogging experience isn’t as fulfilling as others

Taking all of the above in consideration, we can safely declare that modern blogging is a job full of stress, and if you are not taking your mental and physical fitness seriously, it can cast quite negative effects on your overall health and well being.

So here’s the two-way approach to stay fit and deal with the stress built by blogging.

Goal One – Stay Physically Fit:

As earlier suggested, full time blogging will require you to spend more and more time in front of your PC, because you need to be online for everything, from finding new topics to researching for the material, and writing your posts to doing the marketing, and spending all this time while sitting in a bad, bad posture can’t be good for your body. You need to make up for this lack of physical activity by fitting in some exercise routines or sports to your daily schedule to make sure you are not putting up excessive weight. Secondly, if you are looking to take up blogging as a full time job, try to do more work on a standard PC instead of a laptop or notebook, because the smaller screens and keypads will put extra strain on your body parts like eyes, wrists, and shoulders. Lastly, for Bloggers, it can become even more important to maintain a healthy diet program, for example, a big part of your work will require mental labor, therefore it is recommended that you are consuming food which is good for healthy brain, for example salmon, avocado, or walnuts (of course after consulting with your physician).

Goal Two – Stay Mentally Fit:

A healthy body will eventually result in a hale and hearty mind, plus you need to provide your mind with some respite and lots of breaks, mainly because in blogging you are making it work harder than the routine jobs. Ideally, all full time bloggers must be having some sort of a hobby or pastime Away from the computer or TV screen. It will help if you can go out and meet your friends and have some good laugh to wash away the tiredness accumulated from hours and hours of blogging. Lastly, (and this one is going to be tough), try not to be too greedy, because unrealistic expectations or goals will result in more and more stress.

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This post was by Rahil who writes for WeightLossTriumph, who offers fitness related coupon codes like  nutrisystem coupons codes and TRX promotions at his website. You will find many more discounts and reviews of popular products, in addition to nutrisystem and TRX, if you visit his site.

5 Simple Ways to Deliver Irresistible Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

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Be Irresisible!

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If you’ve been developing a business online in the last few years, you’ve probably heard statics regarding the brief amount of time we have to get and keep the attention of first-time visitors. What was almost 20 seconds in 2005 now is being described as something between 8 seconds and 10.

Getting folks to arrive is the first step, of course. In that, an attention-grabbing, killer headline is everything.


Click image to access complete podcast at The Onion.

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.

If a headline delivers traffic, but the traffic immediately bounces away, can you say the headline wins?

A killer headline will get traffic, but what keeps folks reading?
We have to deliver great content to give that headline legs or that traffic will bounce away.

5 Ways to Deliver Irresistible Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

Strong businesses are built on strong relationships. What transforms a headline clicker into someone who hangs around? What turns first-time visitors into people who want to stick around? What makes them stay and already thinking about their return? 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 content that your headline promises.
  2. Deliver content in short paragraphs using subheads surrounded by lots of white space so that people have room to think and breathe. Add a picture that supports the text and illustrates the content. First impressions count.
  3. Deliver it without making folks jump over ads or through hoops to get to the prize that the headline promises. Decide whether you want me to stay … there are other ways to get me to buy.
  4. Deliver it by responding to the people who take time to comment.
  5. Deliver it by making it easy to find more of what brought people to your site.

It’s not the visitor who never came that’s a loss. It’s the visitor who comes to find that we’re not what he or she thought. A great headline followed by something less doesn’t win. It doesn’t even finish.

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


Click image to see complete article from The Onion.

If the content you deliver is easy to access, faster to enjoy or employ, and adds value and meaning to a visitor’s life, you can bet that visitors will be glad they came and ready to come back. Easier, faster, more meaningful is irresistible. That’s a fact.

Great headline, lame blog post — who wants to deal with that? You’ve been there. What’s your response when you end up on one of those?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

5 Steps to Increasing Your Blog Comments

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How to blog series

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Virginia Cunningham

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You’ve created a blog, made a few posts, maybe even installed some ads for the extra income. You’re locked and loaded to take the Internet by storm. But where are all the comments? Where is the dedicated audience breathlessly hanging on your every word?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to succumb to the tumbleweeds just yet. If you’re eager for more fans, here are five steps to increasing your blog comments.

1. Comment On Other Blogs

Before anything else, you need to establish your presence in your field. This is most easily achieved by commenting on other blogs and making a name for yourself as someone worth listening to. By making smart, funny and helpful comments on other blogs, readers will be interested enough to follow you back to your own.

2: Respond To Comments

No one likes to be ignored, and if your commenters feel like they’re shouting into an empty void, they become much less likely to comment in the future. To gain (and keep) an active community of followers, you’ll need to make a habit of responding to their comments. Answer their questions. Suggest new tech. Outsource their problems if you have to. Regardless of the content, just make sure their comments don’t go unnoticed. They’ve taken time out of their lives to comment on your blog; the least you can do is offer them the same courtesy.

3. Create A Community

It’s basic psychology: people like to belong. Take advantage of this by turning your commenting pool into a community – a place with its own language and lingo, a place where people can build friendships and swap stories without feeling out of place. If something happens to one of your followers, spotlight it. If you think two people would really get along, mention it. Make introductions among your followers. Create memes. Reference inside jokes in your updates. When new visitors feel the urge to “fit in,” you’ll know you’re doing it right.

4. Ask For Opinions

The best thing that can happen to any blog is a lively debate, so inspire some passion by soliciting the opinions of your followers. Make polls, ask leading questions (“what do you guys think?”) and encourage the most vocal of your readers. Don’t be afraid to touch on scandalous topics, because those often create the most heated (and long-running) exchanges.

5. Be Interesting

What makes you comment on a blog? What pushes you from a mere reader to an active participant in an exchange of ideas? It wouldn’t have happened if the blog wasn’t interesting or engaging enough to merit your response.

To this extent, if you want comments, you just have to be a good blogger. You need to be active, interesting, and well-informed in your field. Your post should be entertaining and relevant. Your comments should be smart and useful.

Simply put, if you want more comments on your blog, make your blog worth commenting on.

Author’s Bio: Virginia Cunningham is a freelance technology writer based in Los Angeles, California. She currently blogs about id security, social media and gadgets.

Thank you, Virginia! Engagement is always a noble quest.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!