Writing Great Headlines & Great Links
First up - as a blogger, I'm often amazed at how little people comment on my blog. Last week, I found a sure-fire way to get people to comment - write a provocative headline.
Is social media is a fad? Don't count it out. Brenda D makes an excellent point that, as always, you should choose a message delivery method that appeals to your audience. Social media is just one more tool in your toolbox.
On the subject of comments - I found this interesting post on why people don't comment on blogs.
Gerry McGovern recently wrote a very funny post about how to write a great web link. One would think that this is a post about writing - but it's actually a post about links that do what the user expects. Not surprisingly, (whack the side of your head here) is the expectation of a visitor that a using customer service or contact link will actually result in a contact.
McGovern writes that in the case of one Web site, 50% of all contact requests went unanswered. He continues with some suggested new contact links:
"If your organization is unwilling to get back to people who contact you, here are some alternative ways you could name your link:
Contact Us (only joking)
Contact us if you can
Just try and contact us
Don’t contact us; we’ll contact you"
Do you need to rewrite your contact links?
And finally, Jeanette Warnert has passed along a link to an eXtension presentation on Search Engine Optimization.
If you've ever wondered the difference between a visit and a hit, how spiders and bots work, if you need to worry about metatags and keywords, or want to improve your site's ranking in search results, this is a presentation worth watching.