It’s been 3 days since I implemented BlogRush in this blog’s sidebar, and while some apparently aren’t pleased with the service’s performance on their blogs, I have to say I’m not one of those unhappy campers. I’ve noted a significant uptick in traffic of about 10% over the last three days, and the one major complaint I had about the widget – that the headlines were stale, and weren’t rotating quickly enough to generate interest – has been rectified by the company.
As this blogger points out, BlogRush is a traffic-generation tool – not a lead generating tool. What’s the difference? Traffic comes first. You convert traffic – readers, in other words – to leads by the strength of your content and the value you offer them once they get to your site. Tools like BlogRush help drive those folks to your website where you will (we hope) convert them to leads, and thence to clients. It’s a process – sometimes a long, arduous one – but it has to start with the traffic. And in a crowded blogosphere, you need any assistance you can get that will legitimately drive traffic to your site. If it’s traffic that will stick around a bit – in other words, if it’s traffic looking for what you have to offer – then you’re off to a good start. So, if you haven’t signed up yet, my advice is: sign up. Give it a try. Monitor the results on your own blog and see if works for you.
Traffic generation that’s predisposed to stick around – that’s where I think BlogRush can deliver pretty well. But, as Snowboard John points out, it’s got to start with your headline. Make sure your headline is short enough (40 characters, or about 7 words, John suggests) to be completely included in the widget. But more than that, you can also with little effort tweak your headlines to generate even further clicks once they’re on your page, and reviewing your recent posts. Here are some general pointers for crafting vivid, hard-working headlines for your blog posts:
- Be stingy – try to use the fewest words possible to communicate the key points of your post.
- Use vivid, strong, and active words – but stay away from flowery or overly descriptive language.
- Think like a reporter – keep the goal of communication always in the forefront of your mind.
- Target your readers’ emotions by making sure the headline conveys urgency and makes them want to read the post.
- Avoid cryptic! At all costs, stay away from “cute” or “clever” linguistic formulations – as John puts it (I paraphrase), headlines that only make sense after you read the post.
When you think you’ve got it right, run it by the free online tool at the Advanced Marketing Institute. According to the Headline Analyzer, the emotional marketing value for most professional copywriters’ headlines will range from 30-40%; the headline for this post (as it reads now) is 40% so that’s pretty good, apparently. But note that a truncated version – “Improve Your Blog’s Traffic With Better Headlines” – carried a score of 14.29%! Almost the very same words, but a vastly different score. (But it’s commonly accepted blogging wisdom that “how to” is a very compelling phrase for blog readers.)
So, there’s a balance between sometimes competing interests in crafting the perfect headline. And in the final analysis, it’s perfectly true that it’s a judgment call – more art than science. All we can do is get as close as we can, and then leap.
Technorati Tags:
blogrush, raising blog traffic
Technorati Tags:
raising blog traffic, referral based marketing for solos, blog headlines
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