by Caroline Leach | Sep 30, 2017 | Social Media
There’s nothing like discovering a shiny new tool and then learning that using it doesn’t necessarily make a difference.
No, I’m not talking about those teeth-whitening strips that promise a sparkling smile but don’t fully deliver.
I’m talking about headline analyzers. In my last post I did an experiment to analyze all of the headlines in this blog. The purpose was to see if my headlines were doing a good job of attracting and engaging readers.
Turns out, according to some sources, it may not make a significant difference in how many people actually click through and read the post.
But “making a difference” can have different meanings.
If we’re talking about improving the open rates of a blog post, then using a headline analyzer may not make a difference.
However, there are other ways of making a difference.
For me, using a headline analyzer is a fun way to practice writing 25 headlines for each blog post. This is a best practice to land on an attention-grabbing headline.
Using an analyzer – and my favorite is CoSchedule – is an engaging game to see how I can get the highest score. Then, among the top scores, I look for the headline(s) with positive sentiment, as opposed to negative or neutral sentiment.
Each week as I repurpose a blog post as a LinkedIn article, engagement is increasing with more likes, comments and shares. However, it’s hard to tease out if that’s due to the frequency and consistency of posting, a growing number of connections and audience size, or better quality headlines.
But whether or not headline analyzers have been proven to increase readership or not, the tool is helpful in improving the quality and descriptiveness of my headlines.
That got me thinking.
How else could I use the analyzer tools?
Email subject lines. With every email I write, I ask myself a question: if the recipient reads nothing else but the subject line, will they get my main message?
Also, will that subject line be easily searchable later on, when the person is looking for relevant information?
If writing 25 headlines for each blog post using the headline analyzer helps me write better headlines, couldn’t it help with my email subject lines too?
Clearly, with dozens of emails going out every day, it’s not feasible to analyze every subject line.
But for the more important messages, going to the busiest people? Absolutely.
Speech titles. Today I’ve been working on what I call my TED talk about “How to boost your career through social media.”
Or maybe it will be “How to live your best professional life in social media.” That’s the headline that got the highest score, with an 83 out of 100. The target is a score of 70 or higher.
It’s not a real TED talk at this point. Although it was fun to see my teenage son’s eyes light up when he thought his mom was actually giving a TED talk.
It’s the process of creating a TED talk that is guiding my presentation about social media savvy for corporate professionals.
Over the last few months, I’ve been invited to speak to 3 or 4 groups about how to build their careers through social media. That’s why it’s time to create the actual presentation and synthesize everything I’ve been blogging about for the last year.
TED talks are how people are used to learning about “ideas worth spreading,” so it made sense to me to start with this format. I’m inspired by the TED Talks book, and the talks by Chris Anderson and Nancy Duarte.
Once the talk is crafted in that format, I can adapt it to different audiences and different speaking times.
The “idea worth spreading” is often crystallized in the title of the talk. So why not give the headline analyzer a try?
In addition to trying 25+ different titles, I entered a few existing talk titles in the headline analyzer. Not surprisingly, most of them were above the 70 threshold for a good title.
Slogans and tagline. Then I wondered how a slogan or tagline would fare in a headline analyzer.
I added “how to” to my employer’s consumer brand tagline. I’m happy – but not surprised – to report it scored above the 70 threshold. (This is where I remind readers that opinions expressed in this blog are my own).
Then there was a variation on the employer brand tagline that a group of us created at a former company. Again, I was happy to discover it was well above the threshold.
When we were narrowing down the tagline from a dozen options, though, it would have been great to test them with a headline analyzer.
What other ways could a headline analyzer be helpful? Book titles didn’t fare well when I tested a few. Maybe I’ll try it for blog post subheads or upcoming tweets.
Most importantly, this tool has prompted me to stretch and try a variety of word combinations. Whether or not the data supports greater readership and engagement, the fact that I’m being more creative is a win in my book.
How are you using headline analyzers beyond their original purpose?
by Caroline Leach | Sep 10, 2017 | Marketing & Analytics, Social Media
Headlines hold special power.
They determine whether people tap on a blog post or a LinkedIn article to read more, or whether they swipe past it.
“One of the best ways to make your content shareable, get found on search engines and grow your traffic is to write great headlines,” says Nathan Ellering of the marketing calendar company called Co-Schedule.
How do you create irresistible headlines?
“Write 25 different headlines for every post,” advises Garrett Moon, the co-founder of CoSchedule.
This echoes career blogger Penelope Trunk‘s mantra in her course on reaching your goals through blogging.
“Your title [or headline] is extremely important,” she says. “It should tell people what’s there beyond the click, and how it relates to your reader and how their life will change.”
Realizing that I devote hours to each blog post, but only spend a few minutes on a headline when I’m getting ready to publish, I knew it was time to switch the focus.
Quick Hacks to Help You Come Up with Attractive Blog Post Headlines by Marko Saric led me to CoSchedule’s headline analyzer.
Type in any headline. You’ll get instant data on word balance, headline type, length analysis, first 3 and last 3 words, keywords, and sentiment (positive, neutral or negative).
Plus, you’ll see how your headline will appear in a Google search or as an email subject line. Those first few words really matter.
Headlines are scored on a scale from 0 to 100. The best headlines (green) score at 70 and above. Average headlines (yellow) are 55 to 69, and bad headlines (red) are 54 and below.
This made me wonder how all of my blog headlines would stack up. So I did a little experiment. I entered all 152 of them into the headline analyzer.
And what a humbling experience it was. Only 36 headlines were green, 55 were yellow and 61 were red. Ouch!
What went wrong?
Two things stand out.
First, I was writing short headlines that would fit better into my current WordPress theme. I tried to be too clever and too brief so the headline would fit on a single line. As a result, the headlines weren’t fully describing what the post was about.
Second, I suffered from “the curse of knowledge.” This is a trick our brains play on us. When we’re highly familiar with certain information, we tend to assume that others are similarly informed, even though that logically makes no sense.
Because of this, I wasn’t assessing my headlines from the point of view of someone who didn’t know as much about the subject as I did. My brain filled in details, but since they weren’t in the headline, not enough information was there to interest a reader.
Yet there was a silver lining. In the last 9 months my headlines have been all green and yellow, with 50% in each category. Why? I wrote longer, more descriptive headlines. And this showed up in the analyzer scores.
Looking beyond the scores, I could see what headline types I was using. According to Ellering, the most effective types of headlines are list posts, how to’s, and questions.
The sentiment scores also attracted my attention. Headlines with neutral sentiment get the least engagement. Positive headlines attract the most attention. This is consistent with other data I’ve found on people being more inclined to share positive stores.
Then there’s the emotional angle to consider. The Advanced Marketing Institute developed an Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. This tells you how much of an emotional chord you’re striking with your readers.
As I wrote 25 headlines for this post, I tried the top-scoring ones in the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer.
Disappointingly, the top-scoring headline with a 76 – “Will the 25th Headline You Write be the Best?” – only rated a 22.22% EMV. That’s not great when a target of 30-40% EMV words is desirable, and higher is even better.
I chose this particular headline because I wanted to prove a point in this post. Writing 25 headlines helps get your creativity flowing, and you start writing better headlines once you get to 10 or 12. However, diminishing returns can set in. Rarely will the 25th headline be the best one.
But in the process you’ll come up with an optimal headline. While your 25th headline won’t likely be your best, there’s tremendous value in training your brain to write that many headlines.
Unfortunately my top headline didn’t hit enough emotional notes. So I went to the next-highest-scoring headline and made a few tweaks. I came up with “Do You Really Have to Write 25 Headlines to Get an Awesome One?”
This got an EMV score of 46.15%. That euphoric feeling only lasted until I entered it in the headline analyzer. Too many words, it said.
Is there a happy medium between the scientifically optimal headline and the emotionally appealing headline?
For this post, it turned out to be “Do You Have to Write 25 Headlines to Get an Awesome One?” Taking the “too wordy” feedback to heart, I eliminated the word “really.”
It was a balance between a 73 green score in the headline analyzer . . .
. . . and a 41.67% EMV score.
So what if the headline analyzer still said it was too wordy? Those words may just elicit more emotion – and more engagement with this post.
For now I’ll live with the cognitive dissonance of a headline analyzer that identifies 0% emotional words and an emotional marketing value analysis above 40%. Clearly the algorithms differ, so it’s something to explore in future posts.
And the most fun of all? The science of words is starting to turn me into a data geek after all.
by Caroline Leach | Aug 20, 2017 | Social Media
You get a big compliment every time someone reshares your LinkedIn article with their connections.
Each reshare is a valuable endorsement of your content, and it reaches a broader audience.
This creates a perfect opportunity to boost engagement with your LinkedIn articles. It’s yet another strategy for social media savvy.
(This where I remind readers that opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
What’s a good way to respond?
For starters, you have to go looking.
Most of the time when you get a compliment, you know about it right away. You’re there. You’re present.
In the case of LinkedIn reshares right now, someone may compliment you and you might not know immediately.
You’ll know about a reshare if one of three things happens. First, if someone @mentions you in their update, you’ll receive a notification. Second, you can actively look at the article analytics. And third, you’ll see them in a weekly LinkedIn publishing digest email.
Here’s a simple process for engaging with people who reshare your articles.
Access the article analytics each day and click on the “reshares” link. There you’ll see who has shared your article, if they included an update message with it and what that update message says.
See if each person is in your network or not. Visit each profile to identify common interests and mutual connections. Look at each person’s own articles and updates.
“Like” the reshare and leave a comment. Thank the person for sharing your article. Personalize your message by relating it to their update message, if they included one. Add information of value in the comment for both the person who reshared and for their network.
Mention the person in your comment. By mentioning the person’s name, they will receive a notification that you posted a comment. This increases the likelihood that they will actually see your comment.
“Like” and comment on one of the person’s articles or updates. Choose a recent one that is most closely aligned with your own content strategy. Social media is all about reciprocity, and this is a perfect scenario to reciprocate. Consider resharing it if it’s especially pertinent to the type of content you usually share.
The most important thing I’ve learned here is to be proactive in looking at reshares – they won’t find you. You have to find them. And take action.
This exercise made me realize it’s time to re-activate my analytics spreadsheet. I created one during my month-long experiment of posting content on LinkedIn every weekday for a month.
Now that I’ve been posting one LinkedIn article each week, I can’t wait to dig into the data. I’ll share learnings in future posts.
In the meantime, how do you engage with people who reshare your articles?
by Caroline Leach | Aug 13, 2017 | Social Media
Are you making the most of the mutual connections feature of LinkedIn profiles?
Mutual connections appear in the highlights section of profiles, right under the summary at the top.
It’s one of the first things I view, especially when I’m meeting someone new or working with someone for the first time.
This is all part of having a comprehensive social media savvy strategy in navigating your professional path in the corporate world. (Opinions in this blog are my own.)
BEFORE YOU VIEW MUTUAL CONNECTIONS’ PROFILES
Here’s a quick tip before you view the profiles of mutual connections. Set your browsing profiles option to “private.” That way, your name won’t appear as someone who’s viewed a profile.
There may be instances when you want people to know you’ve viewed your profile. Sometimes it’s a good way to indicate interest. But in most cases, it’s better to view profiles in private mode.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN MUTUAL CONNECTIONS
How many mutual connections do you have? This indicates how closely or loosely connected you are to the person. If you have many connections in common, you’re both part of a well-developed community.
If you have only a few connections in common, this person probably adds more diversity of thought to your network. He or she may be someone you want to get to know better.
Why? Cultivating a diverse network is a key leadership skill for the 21st century. Roselinde Torres shares why in her TED talk on What it takes to be a great leader.
Torres says that “great leaders understand that having a more diverse network is a source of pattern identification at greater levels and also of solutions, because you have people who are thinking differently than you are.”
How many of them did you expect to see? Assess how many are people you would have expected to see connected to this person. This will help you answer the next question . . .
Who’s NOT there who you would have expected to see? In other words, who’s missing? And why do you think that is? Most times, it could be a simple oversight. But there could be other reasons you might want to contemplate.
What organizations and affiliations do you have in common? What are the common employers, professional associations, community organizations, schools, and so on. Again, fewer common organizations could indicate greater diversity in your network.
Which ones are unexpected wild-card connections? This is the most interesting question. Who surprised you? Who made you wonder how your connection knows this mutual connection?
These connections could be the boundary spanners among groups in your network. They’re the people who may be able to connect people and ideas across multiple networks. And they could be people you can reach out to when you’re looking for a “needle in a haystack” type of person.
Karie Willyerd, the author of The 2020 Workplace and Stretch is one of those boundary spanners. It’s a surprise and delight when her name appears as a mutual connection to someone I never would have guessed she knows. She’s role modeling her own advice about cultivating a broad and diverse network.
MAKE THE MOST OF MUTUAL CONNECTIONS
Understand the broader social network. Mutual connections tell you more about someone’s network and how it intersects with yours. This can form the basis for conversation starters about how you know each know the mutual connection, what work you’ve done together, and what you might do together in the future.
Recently I was thrilled to be invited to join the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors as the representative of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An accompanying role is on the USC Annenberg Alumni Advisory Board.
As I’ve approached the process of meeting more than 75 fellow alums, knowing our mutual connections helps to seed conversations, find common points of interest and generate ideas about our work together to further the alumni experience.
Get to know a new leader, boss or client. When an important new person enters your professional life, see what mutual connections you have in common. Use the 5 questions above to quickly evaluate the common connections.
Then decide if there are a few trusted people you might ask for advice and insights. Here are a few starter questions you might want to know about:
- What’s important to this person?
- What’s their leadership style?
- Who influences them?
See opportunities for collaboration. Work gets done in cross-functional collaborative teams, whether it’s inside your organization or outside of it in a professional or community group.
Your mutual connections could point the way to already-existing relationships that may make a new collaborative effort even stronger from the start. If you’re putting together any kind of cross-functional team, this can be one more data point to assembling a high-performing team.
What are the ways you make the most of your mutual connections?
by Caroline Leach | Jul 29, 2017 | Social Media
Want to peek into the future of technology and entertainment?
Thousands of people got to do just that at SHAPE, the AT&T Tech & Entertainment Expo at Warner Bros. Studios.
I was one of them. And I wanted to share the experience. So I live tweeted some of the sound bites I heard from some of the spellbinding speakers. (Here’s where I say that opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
Live tweeting – or snapping or gramming, depending on the social platform – is something you can do at every event you attend.
Why not share valuable content with your social networks? It’s an important part of any social media savvy strategy for your professional life.
Here’s a roadmap.
BEFORE THE EVENT: Get Ready
Get familiar with the event. Download the event app. Peruse the agenda. Plan how you’ll spend your time.
Learn about the speakers. Read their bios. Check out their Twitter feed or their Instagram presence or their Snap story.
Know the event’s social strategy. See what social networks the event is using and decide which one(s) you’ll use. Check out the event hashtags. Search them and view existing content.
Follow the event’s Twitter handle(s). In this case, @attdeveloper and @attshape had great tweets throughout the event.
Share your plans to attend. Post pre-event content in your social networks. You may discover friends who will also be there and other people you can take the opportunity to meet in person.
AT THE EVENT: Tell a Compelling Story
Curate your feed. Once the event begins, think of it like a story. Consider the story you want to tell and tweet accordingly. Don’t tweet content unrelated to the event until after it’s over.
Pick a good seat. Sit as close to the front and the center as possible. You’ll be able to get better photos that way. Chat with people sitting near you to see what they’re enjoying about the event and how they’re experiencing it.
Capture images. Take pictures of on-screen images before the speakers begin. You’ll have plenty of visual assets to create your story. And you might be able to use them in a collage.
Take pictures during the talk. Capture interesting visuals. Get up-close pictures of the panel and individual speakers. Capture speakers in action, making expansive and dramatic gestures.
Use photos that show people in the best light. Delete unflattering pictures, such as when a speaker’s eyes are closed or they’re in an awkward pose.
Edit photos for lighting and color. Crop them so they’ll show up well in your tweet. This takes a little trial and error. I’m still learning.
Vary the number of photos you include with each tweet. You can include 1, 2 or 4 photos per tweet. And don’t forget that video can accompany a tweet too.
Listen for sound bites. The AT&T SHAPE app had an invaluable section in each presentation to take notes. So I captured sound bites that grabbed me. It was easier to copy and paste them into a tweet as well as synthesize a number of messages into a single tweet.
If a friend asked you for the one thing you learned, or for 3 key takeaways from a talk, what would you say? Use that same line of reasoning for your tweets. Listen for the best content from the speakers and share the most valuable information.
Use the hashtag(s). In every tweet or post, use the event hashtag. That makes your content more discoverable, and therefore more likely to be liked and shared.
Mention people. Give credit to speakers and panelists by mentioning them in tweets and posts. Use their Twitter handle. If they don’t have a handle, use their name with a hashtag, e.g., #FionaCarter, so the content is more discoverable.
Mention organizations. If a company is involved in some way, weave their Twitter handle into the tweet. By mentioning @Tribeca, one of my tweets was retweeted by the organization. That generated 5,000 impressions!
Keep tabs on the event’s Twitter handle and the event hashtag(s). Look at what the primary event handle is tweeting. Search on the hashtag during the event to see what people are sharing. That leads to the next strategy . . .
Engage with related content. Like and retweet content that adds to the story you want to tell. Use the “quote tweet” feature to include your perspective on the original tweet. Here’s one from my colleague Brooke Hanson.
However, if the “quote tweet” feature eliminates the image from the original tweet (i.e., if it becomes text only), consider a straight retweet so you get the benefit of the visual appearing. Why? Tweets with images get 150% more retweets.
Build relationships. Promote the content and ideas of speakers you know or want to get to know by tweeting about them or retweeting their content. Do the same for people attending the event who are sharing their experience of it.
Look at the Twitter feeds of people who followed you as a result of the event. Follow back the people whose content you want to be associated with.
AFTER THE EVENT: Extend the Experience
Tweet a close to your story. What tweet will put the right finish on your event story? It could be the final tweet from the event’s Twitter handle. Or it could be your biggest takeaway from the event.
Analyze your analytics. Check out your Twitter analytics to see which tweets got the most impressions and the most engagement. Create a hypothesis as to why. This will help you create more engaging tweets, whether it’s the next thing you tweet about or the next event you attend.
Extend the experience. What did you learn at the event? What made the biggest impact on you? What will you change or do differently as a result?
Think about ways you could share those learnings with your social networks. Maybe it’s a final tweet or a maybe it’s a blog post that you share in a tweet.
Apply what you learned. Find at least one thing you’ll do differently as a result of attending the event. Commit to putting it into action right away.
For me, it was sharing how I live tweet an event in this post. This caused me to reflect on the process I use and how it’s evolved over the course of several events.
What I thought was simply an intuitive process actually has several concrete steps. It was a surprise to unpack it and think through each step in the process. And analyzing the analytics from live tweeting will help make it better the next time.
How do you live tweet an event?
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