Posts

Words That Command Attention in Blog Post Titles

/0 Comments/in , , /by

 

Are there certain words, words that are quite common, yet which command a reader’s attention? Leafing through the July issue of TIME magazine, I found the answer to that question is a definite “yes”. Mind you, none of these attention-commanding, curiosity-stimulating words (or set of words) offers the slightest hint of the topic of the article to follow. Instead, these attention-commanding words hint of the tone of the content to come.

  • Finding….
  • How…
  • Could…
  • A new….
  • Singing….
  • Things just….
  • The best…
  • The impossible…
  • The hidden…
  • Is it O.K if….
  • Don’t…
  • Who is….

What these attention-commanders do so subtly and skillfully is to set expectations. The title words “finding”, “the hidden”, the “impossible” might engender the expectation of discovery or of gaining a new insight. “Things just”, “could”, and “the impossible” hint at an opinion piece, even a rant. “The best, “how”, and “don’t” imply that valuable advice and cautions will follow. “How” hints that information about the way a certain process works is to follow, while “Is it O.K if” suggests readers might be asked to weigh in on an ethical dilemma of some sort.

Between Shakespeare’s Juliet asking “What’s in a name?” and father-of-advertising David Ogilby’s emphasis on headlines, there’s simply no contest when it comes to blogging for business – titles matter! There are two basic reasons titles matter so much in blogs, we emphasize at Say It For You. First, key words and phrases, especially when used in blog post titles, help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or professional practice has to offer.

But after you’ve been “found”, you’ve still gotta “get read”, and that’s where these attention-commanding words can be so useful. TIME editors obviously understood this point when it comes to magazine readers. Blog content writers should follow suit, creating titles that are relevant, but which also set the tone and arouse curiosity.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

The Power of Similar Sounds in Blog Post Titles

/0 Comments/in , /by

The contributing authors in the Nature Conservancy Magazine must have collaborated to illustrate the power of similar sounds. As examples for blog content writers, I chose just four of the many titles in that issue:

Roots Rewind
This is an example of classic alliteration. Both words begin with the same consonant.

Keep Carbon
Although the two words begin with different letters, this is another example of alliteration, because the consonant sound is the same.

Orca Answers
Assonance refers to the repetition of vowel, rather than consonant sounds. These two words are not a precise match, but are similar enough to resonate with readers.

Grand Stand
These are rhyming words, where the initial letters are different, with the remaining sounds the same.

A couple of years ago at Say It For You, I began calling attention to the idea of using alliteration in business blog titles with an eye to making them more “catchy”. You see, it’s one thing to write great content, and quite another to get readers to click on it, and alliteration is just one of several creative writing techniques that can make your business correspondence – or your blog title – more engaging.

“It is important to note that alliteration is about the sounds of words, not letters; therefore, the letters “k” and “c” can be used alliteratively (as in the Keep Carbon title above) The letters “s” and “c” (as in sparkle and cycle) could also be used in alliteration. As ereadingworksheets.com explains, the words don’t need to be directly next to each other in the sentence or stanza to be considered alliterative, but a good guideline to follow is whether you can detect the repetition of sound when you read the line aloud. Meanwhile, “It beats as it sweeps as it cleans” (an advertisement for Hoover) is an example of vowel sound repetition in the form of assonance.

At Say It For You, where one of our core teachings is that blog posts are NOT ads, we know it’s important to keep a light touch in order to avoid overuse of similar-sound techniques such as rhyming, assonance and alliteration. The goal, after all, is to “season” the content without “over-salting” it.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

A Business Blog By Any Other Name

/0 Comments/in , /by


Shakespeare’s Juliet asked “What’s in a name?”, and the playwright supplied an answer -“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But would it? Do names matter?

Each year, the Social Security Administration publishes a list of the most popular baby names. Ten years ago, for example, parents were naming their boys Aiden, Jayden, and Ethan. (As of last year, the favorites were Liam, Noah, and William.) A decade ago, girls were being called Emma, Olivia, Ava, and Isabelle (Today the favorites still include Emma.)

One objective in business blogging is winning search, so what you “name” your post, in terms of both its title and the meta description (the 160-character snippets that appear on the search engine page), can matter a lot.

LocationRebel.com lists different approaches content writers can take in “naming” their posts, including:

Guides
Start to finish guide….
Advanced guide to….
An in-depth guide to….

Where, What, Why
Here’s why….
What you can learn from…

The simple…
A simple strategy for….
…ing made simple…

At Say It for You, I often speak about “Huh?” and “Oh!” names for blog posts. The “Huh?s” need subtitles to make clear what the post is about. “Oh!s” titles are self-explanatory. The “Huh?s” are there to startle and arouse curiosity. The subtitle than clarifies what the focus of the piece will actually be. Ideally, the name of the product or service is inserted into the “Oh!” part of the title.

A blog post by any other name might “read as sweet”, but the function of the title is to get them reading in the first place!

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Surprise-Laden Blog Post Titles

/0 Comments/in , , /by

two part blog post titles

 

Blog post titles have a multifaceted job to do, arousing readers’ curiosity while still assuring them they’ve come to the right place. One compromise I’ve suggested to blog content writers is using a two-tiered title, combining a “Huh?” (to get attention) with an “Oh!” (to make clear what the post is actually going to be about).

The latest business book covers use this “compromise solution” all the time. Here are some samples of recently published titles (The main or “Huh?) title is shown in bold, with the “Oh!” subtitle below it):

When to Jump
If the Job you have isn’t the Job You Want

Do  Nothing
Discover the Power of Hands-Off Leadership

The Persuasion Code
How Neuromarketing Can Help You Persuade Anyone, Anywhere, Any Time

When
The Scientific Secret of Perfect Timing

Originals
How Non-conformists Move the World

The Culture Code
The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

The Energy Bus
10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy

In This Together
How Successful Women Support Each Other in Work and Life

Unlike book publishers, we business blog content writers simply don’t have the option of using “mysterious” titles, since search engines will be will be matching the phrases used in our titles with the terms typed into readers’ search bars. So, just how can we get those keyword phrases in while still being enticingly enigmatic?

One possible way is including the “Oh!” part of our title in the meta tag description (the blurb of information that shows up beneath your clickable website address on search engine results pages).

Worth a try, anyway, with the idea being to pique readers’ curiosity and maintain the surprise, but meanwhile, giving the search engines the “advance scoop”.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail

Two-Tiered Business Blog Titles

/0 Comments/in , , /by


What’s “Into the Endgame” about? (How Parliament should weigh up the Brexit deal, of course.)
What about “Click to Download Teacher”? (Technology can help solve the problem of bad, absent teachers in poor-country schools.) “The New Abnormal”? (California faces the most destructive fire in its history). And “Drop It!”? (An argument about firearms will help to shape next year’s election.)

These and other two-tiered titles from this month’s issue of The Economist magazine can serve as a master tutorial for blog content writers. There are two types of titles, I’ve taught in workshops on business blog content writing. The “Huh?s” need sub-titles to make clear what the article is about, while the “Oh!’s” are self-explanatory. With one important purpose of marketing blogs being to  attract online shoppers, blog post titles are a crucial element in the process. That means that catchy and engaging as a title might be, it won’t serve the purpose if the words in the title don’t match up with the ones searchers used.

That’s the reason two-tiered titles use two layers. The first-tier “Huh?” startles and arouses curiosity.  The “Oh!” sub-title then serves to clarify what the focus of the content will be.  (No, this is not a bait-and-switch play, but more like a bait-and-focus one)

Which brings me to meta-tags, which are 160 character snippets of text that describe a page’s content; the meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, as wordstream.com explains, but readers can see them on the search engine page. In addition to being scanned by search engines, those little content descriptors help readers decide whether they want to click to read the content. The snippet serves as a preview of the “Oh!” portion of your blog post title.

For example, underneath the actual link
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/11/15/into-the-brexit-endgame, a searcher would see this snippet: “6 days ago – Britain and the European Union Into the Brexit endgame. How Parliament should weigh up the Brexit deal. Print edition | Leaders. Nov 15th”.

“The New Abnormal” – Huh? “Oh!” It’s about the California fire. In writing engaging business blog content, try using two-tiered titles.

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedintumblrmail