Social Media

4 Examples of Effective Headline Design.

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headline design for web contentHeadline design? What does that mean?

It means writing and formatting your headline in a way that makes it jump out from the page, or email, or a smartphone.

It used to be that headlines had to do a single job, on the web page where the balance of the content followed. Read the headline, and then keep reading the body text immediately below.

Today, headlines still have to work well, immediately above the body content, but they also have to grab attention and hook readers when they stand alone.

Here are a few situations where your headline has to stand alone, or almost alone: When used as a tweet on Twitter. In an RRS feed. On a smartphone. In Reddit or Digg.

In these circumstances, your headline has to jump out from dozens of others, and get the reader to click through to the full page or post.

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Social media enables conversation. But do you?

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using social media as a broadcast medium, talking at peopleOver the last few days I have been putting together a presentation about how to drive engagement through social media.

As I looked for examples, a couple of things struck me.

First, engagement is just a trendy word for conversation, and conversation is a big word for talking. In other words, social media is about talking with people.

Second, I discovered that almost nobody was actually using social media as a means to talk with people.

By far the most common use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social sites was simply to talk at people. Here is what I’m doing. Here is what I’m thinking. Here is what I have written. Here is some news about our latest product or service.

In other words, most companies are still using social media as a broadcast medium.

However, I did find companies that were taking the trouble to talk with their prospects and customers through social media.

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A short video on how freelancers can profit from social media.

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You don’t need to me to tell you how fast social media is growing. But you may not be aware of some of the actual figures…like how there are almost 700,000 updates being published on Facebook every 60 seconds.

Within the ongoing growth of social media, opportunities abound. And this is particularly true for freelancers who are, in many ways, ideally positioned to profit from social media.

To give you an idea of the scale of the opportunity for freelancers, I have created this short slideshow video…

The teleconference call mentioned in the video has come and gone, but you can learn more about my social media program here.

3 Ways to Make Your Web Content Headlines More Shareable.

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web content headlinesMaking headlines shareable through social media? What’s that about?

Well, if your content page headlines aren’t gaining significant traction through social media, you’re missing the boat.

Today, all your content headlines have to do double duty:

First, they have to work on the content page itself. The page headline has to compel attention, hook the reader, and drive readers into the body of the content.

Second…your headlines have to be shareable through social media.

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If your freelance business website looks old, it will damage your brand.

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nick usborne's freelance websiteLast year’s fashions look old. Last year’s smartphones look old. And last year’s websites look old.

OK, I’m exaggerating a little. Let’s make that 5 years.

Whatever the exact timeframe, there is no doubt that any given look and feel for a website eventually grows old.

As a freelancer, or for any business, you can’t allow that to happen. You can’t have a website that looks like it was last worked on back in 2005 or, even worse, 1998.

In some ways it’s odd that website design should be so susceptible to changes in fashion. If a particular look and feel works, why change it?

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