Get People to Click your Shit
You want people on Twitter, Stumble, Digg or wherever to click through to your articles, images, YouTube videos and blog posts?
Here is one avenue people appreciate:
- Be funny.
Have a funny title or caption if you can spare one. Keep in mind the funny might not be as useful for SEO purposes.
Take, for example, my title here:
- Get People to Click your Shit
I think it’s funny. Does it have excellent keywords?…well, no. An SEO friendly title would read more like: How to Attract Click Throughs. How to Attract Readers to your Articles. How to Get Readers to Click Through to your Articles. Boring stuff like that.
If I was writing an article for a website I would have done just that. I would go with the keywords and get the SEO goodness from search engines. But this is my damn personal blog and I will do what I like with it.
If you really want to be smart, you can have an SEO friendly title AND still get the funny across. You can have a subtitle that’s funny. Or make a funny description. Or have funny tags.
In this case, I could have written:
- How To Convert More Readers: Click My Shit.
Convert, Readers and Click are all decent search terms. How To is a good search phrase. And the most important thing: Shit is still in the title. We’re really all just monkeys laughing about feces.
Or, I could make a Twitter post about eating brains, which always sounds funny. For example, Dan just sent me a zombie video. Zombies are funny on their own, but you can phrase things to sound even more enticing. Here is my recent Tweet on Common Craft’s video about surviving zombie attacks:
- Save Your Brains. How to identify, escape and eliminate zombies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVnfyradCPY&feature=user
I could have just said, “How to identify, escape and eliminate zombies” - which is certainly funny on its own, yet so earnestly serious. My playful brain eating touch is sure to get Common Craft a few more readers, which they deserve, as their video is cute, funny, and provides useful advice about surviving zombie attacks. The best of all worlds! Just like this blog post!
So what have we learned today? That zombies, brains and shit are funny. That we’re monkeys. And that, yes, there ARE benefits to possessing an irreverent mind, despite what my teachers said about me.
Filed under Defies Categorization, mind clutter |8 Responses to “Get People to Click your Shit”
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I think you’re onto something here: titles should be for people. The content can be for search engines. Best if you can strike a balance between the two.
polyGeeks last blog post..Subtle mistake I made with Data Binding
Wellll, that wasn’t actually my point, but thank you. And yes, there should be a balance.
I really do think the most powerful way to get traffic from search engines is to use boring but search engine loaded keywordy titles. This is what I taught my writers as a Section Editor for Suite101.
If someone is seeking traffic, as opposed to Stumbles, Diggs or retweets, then it’s safer and smarter to play the keyword route. Your title is THE most important thing search engines value.
But if you have a following, or you don’t care about the traffic (ie - a personal blog is intended to be entertaining/about personality in most cases), or most of your clicks come from social media…well then. In that case you can do what you please to attract like-minded ladies and gents, right?
Oh. And this just in, related to really nothing: if you like zombies a whole lot and you like yoga too, why not combine them?
Yoga for Zombies on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsV1ShKtAcE&NR=1
Hmmm so this is kinda like “Buy My Crap”. You know, what I say at craft fairs… LOL On on good days, I try to fiure out how to get more to buy more of my crap. Yeah.
Yes. Say it like it is: *Buy My Crap*. I’d buy your crap, Jeanne.
It’s like a homeless person’s sign I saw in Seattle: *I just want Booze*.
I hate SEO friendly titles. I love your title. Rock on.
jamies last blog post..Costa Rica: Five Family Favorites
I really like this post because its very True. Its not a SEO friendly Title, but it caught my attention, and I click the link immediate. Just the ramblings of another monkey.
Michael Thomass last blog post..5 Steps To Success In Internet Marketing
I have really enjoyed clicking your shit.