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Cute Headlines Don’t Work

Steven Hodson of WinExtra.com learned a valuable lesson today that is worthy of sharing and that is, cute headlines don’t work. I know I’ve had my days where I come up with what I believe to be an awesome headline only to find out that it turned into a failure. I think the headlines which don’t work the most often are the ones that are inside jokes that only the post author knows. With that in mind, I think it’s time to revisit an excellent guide that was published by Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com that focuses entirely on headlines. The guide is as follows:

  1. Why You Should Always Write Your Headline First
  2. The Cheater’s Guide to Writing Great Headlines
  3. Do Key Words in Post Titles Really Matter?
  4. How to Write a Killer “How To” Post That Gets Attention
  5. 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work
  6. Why Some People Almost Always Write Great Post Titles
  7. 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work
  8. 7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work
  9. Warning: Use These 5 Surefire Headline Templates at Your Own Risk

Writing excellent headlines is a science to say the least but after reading Brian’s guide, it should be much easier.

Blogging Not Just For The Young

Browsing through the feedreader today, I came across an enlightening story about an 80 year old grandmother turned blogger. This grandmother has been using the net since the 1990s but once she became bored, she started up a blog that describes her take on life, her grandchildren, or sometimes topics such as where to get the best potato salad.

I always find blogs written by seniors to be much more interesting to read than those of younger people because of the amount of life experience they have. Getting their take on things is great especially if they have lived through the experience once or twice before hand.

What is your take on senior bloggers?

10 Reasons To Blog

Are you still on the fence on whether or not to have your own blog? Howard Flomberg of the Examiner published his list of 10 reasons on why to blog. While some of the items have a comical feel to them, most are down to earth such as number 2,

2. It will improve your writing skill. Just think, if you have a hundred people reading your blog, you now have a hundred editors!


After you give his quick ten reasons a read, come on back and let me know a reason or two as to why someone should blog.

Search Engine Optimization For Videos

We all know what SEO is, I’ve heard of SMO, but this is the first time I have heard of the term ‘VSEO‘ or Video Search Engine Optimization. Over on Jack Humphrey’s blog, Jack answers a reader question that asks what can be done to promote videos and improve their SERPS. The information is pretty straight forward. Ironically, many of the same tips provided by Jack for VSEO coincide with SEO. No surprise there. If you give your content descriptive titles, summaries or descriptions, tags, etc. you should do just fine whether it be SEO, VSEO, PSEO (Podcast SEO). In any case, Jack’s blog post is still a good reminder that the basics of SEO in general still matter.

Caught In The Act Via Pmetrics

About a week or two ago, I happened to be browsing around Pmetrics for Performancing checking out the stats and of course, spending some time monitoring the Spy feature. Good thing to as I caught a spammer in the act. Refer to the screenshot to see what I mean.

The screenshot reads best when read from the bottom up. I noticed that the IP address had a registered account and was editing a page they had created on the Performancing website. Administer this site long enough and it becomes pretty easy to spot something out of the ordinary. A post title of “Professional Details” screams out spammy to me. Sure enough, you can see that my IP address (173.#.#.#) visits the users profile page. I then block the users account while they are editing the details. When that user clicked on the save button, they received an Access Denied error because I blocked their account. I admit, it felt pretty satisfying and humorous at the same time to actually nail a spammer in real-time.

Unfortunately, the feeling of making progress was short lived as a couple more spammers signed up for accounts on the site. As it stands, Performancing.com is in a bad position right now because the site contains hundreds of user accounts which have public profiles showcasing either spam or pornographic material. Just the other day, I deleted 10 pages worth of users and I didn’t even put a dent in the situation. I’ve discussed this with J Angelo Racoma and we are working on at the very least, getting the site to the point where we can turn user registration off but because the Performancing.com database is linked with Pmetrics, disabling one disables the other. A quick lesson to be learned here is this, really think things through (longterm) before you decide to link databases together.

As part of the revamp of Performancing, I believe most, if not all of the user accounts stored in the Performancing.com database will be removed. At least, that is how I understand it. The bottom line is, if you type into Google a certain set of keywords or phrases that are usually published by spammers and your site comes in with not one, but many hits and they are public user profile pages, it’s safe to say that you have a problem.

As we transition Performancing.com, there are a number of things that are worth sharing that I believe many within the audience would benefit from. In the coming days, weeks during the transition, I’ll be highlighting specific changes that will be taking place and the reasons behind them. After all, sharing the experiences of administering/running a multi authored is a great way to learn.

Pmetrics

Ok, back to the subject at hand. I wanted to let you know that pMetrics is a web statistics package that gives bloggers and web site owners a deeper look at traffic and visitor activity. It comes with a sparkly-clean and simple interface, live, real-time statistics and search keyword and keyphrase tracking. As far as blog stats and web site statistics packages go, pMetrics is unrivaled. Packages for the service start at just $2.99 per month however, Pmetrics does contain a free plan. All new accounts get a free 21 day trial of the pro service so head on over to pmetrics.performancing.com to sign up for your account.

Replace Donate Button With A Wishlist

I don’t link to him often but Jeremy Schoemaker a.k.a. Shoemoney had an interesting topic today in that, perhaps you should replace the “Donate!” button on your site with an Amazon Wishlist! instead. His opinion is that, the donate button with a set amount or one of those buy me a coffee buttons which is practically the same thing doesn’t really allow for someone to give back. While it might feel great donating a couple bucks to someone, personally, I’d feel great if someone were to purchase a product for me that I either want, or need.

I’ve donated some cash here and there to WordPress plugin authors but I don’t do it very much. Have you? Would you rather see a list of items that the person needs or wants and simply buy one of those? How has the donate button performed on your own site?

Are You Blogging Through The Holidays?

The holidays are here, and most of us folks will most likely be taking some time off of blogging to spend a few precious moments with friends and family, whichever religion you belong to. For those of us who don’t necessarily observe the holidays out of faith, but out of some secular reason, then you would most probably be vacationing, too. Not in the holiday mood yet? Oh don’t be such a grinch. Go have some fun, or spend time with your loved ones.

But then what happens to your blogs during those times when you take a break?

You blog through the holidays. I’ll be on break these next couple of days, but I will most probably still be publishing a few blog posts in my free time, or while on the road visiting relatives. That’s the power of mobile computing, anyway. I can either use my mobile phone or my netbook (coupled with a 3G modem) to do this. Why? Because I can!

You have posts saved in advance, and to be published at pre-defined dates. A handful of people I know have the habit of future-posting, so they can take a few days off from their blogs without their readership missing them. Some would clearly tell readers that the posts were done in advance, in case some new developments in the online world override the information in that blog post. Some would not be as transparent.

Your blog takes a break, too. This might be frowned upon by folks who believe in consistent and regular updates. But for those of us who are very much concerned about quality and thoughtfulness of posts would rather not post at all, if these are to be done in a hurry while huddled over a miniaturized laptop with a slow, unreliable Internet connection, while waiting to board your plane/train/bus. Good blogging should be done with good timing, too, right?

Which of these three are you?

What Should Go On Your About Page

Just a few days ago, I put out the reminder to check over your about page to make sure all of the information is up to date. However, I noticed at least one person ask, “What should go on our about page”?

By no means is there a complete guide on what should absolutely be presented on the about page but keep this in mind. If a visitor comes across your blog and their first impression doesn’t tell them what the blog is about, they will head straight to the page that provides more information. Here is my non-concrete guide of suggestions to what I think should be on your about page.

Short And Sweet – Right at the top of the about page, you should be short and concise as to what the blog is about and the information that is covered. There is no need to provide a mile long description of why the site exists because you can provide that further down the page.

Personalize – Let me tell you, going to a blog conference and not being able to match your favorite blogger with a face is pretty weird. To keep that from happening, place a picture of yourself on the page. This gives the overall blog a human touch and also enables your fanbase to recognize you out in the real world.

Detailed Information – As far as detailed information is concerned, depending on the type of blog this is, you can add your real name, occupation, hometown, education, etc. As for myself, I treat my About Page as part of my resume and so, most of what you would see on a resume is published on my about page. This gives prospecting employers information that they would otherwise have to contact me for.

Contact Information – At some point within the page, you should either link to your contact page, publish your email address, or provide a means for contacting you. Having an about page or doing anything online is almost worthless if there is no means in getting in touch with you.

All About The Details – After providing pertinent information about yourself, now would be a good time to tell your audience just how the blog came to be. At this point, you can dive into the history surrounding the site to give your audience an overall look at the big picture.

Where To Follow You – Again, depending upon the type of blog you have, you can also list the places for which you have worked/written for on the web. I do this on my own page because it acts as my resume place holder. It also gives my audience a chance to follow me across the web as I move from place to place.

Conclusion:

In a nutshell, that is pretty much the basis of what should be in your about page. Of course, depending on what kind of site/blog it is will determine the type of information presented within. Keep in mind that a good way not to have anyone write about you or your blog when introducing it to their audience is to either have little to no information on the page or no about page at all. If you happen to be one of those bloggers with no about page, thanks for contributing to blogging frustration.

If you need more ideas on what to put into your about page, check out this post on Problogger from 2005 which interestingly enough, is still relevant today.