Read This Article  Before Putting Anything Else on the Internet! - Page 3 of 4

By J.S. McDougall

3. Is this appropriate for my –audience?

This is a loaded question. It assumes that you know your audience, and that you've targeted your social media, email and blog outlets to that audience. If so, you must make sure you're not abusing the audience's trust by posting something that you REALLY want them to see...but that they simply do not want.

This is an instance where it can be extremely tempting (believe me, I know!) to fire off an excerpt from your hot new gardening book to the 30,000 people on your cookbook mailing list. Big numbers are dangerously alluring. Don't do it. Those 30,000 people have elected to get your cooking content. Gardening isn't "close enough." If you want to keep them, build (or buy) a separate gardening list.

4. Will my title grab anyone's –attention?

Websites are not read. They're scanned… quickly. People dart around the page looking (frantically) for their next click. Your content's title must stand out. And it must convey the value of your content in an instant.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not limited to websites. Often, when your content appears in feeds or aggregators or tweets or emails, the only bit of your post that readers will see is the title. The most popular news and content readers of the day—Zite, Currents, Flipboard and others—display your title and a photo in a list buried among other publishers' content. In order for your content to be selected from that list, you need to spend all the time you need to come up with a title that prompts clicking.

What prompts clicking? This depends on your audience, the language you use, what's popular that day and so on. Post timely content that's relevant to the larger discussion of the day. Use language in your title that conveys the content's value in an instant: "Learn to…"; "How to…"; "Watch a tiger…"; "The Top Ten Best…" and so on. And, make your titles short. Feeds and aggregators will chop off anything beyond a certain number of characters, so be sure to put your punch up front!