Social Media - The Power of the Title
October 17th, 2006 by Michael Gray in SEO, Social NetworksIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Rand made an interesting observation about a post that got “dugg” (I think he’s nailed it too). However the real gem of wisdom comes from Rob Stevens who makes this observation
I’m glad to see people are finally starting to realize what many of us have seen all along: that the communities at Digg (and Slashdot) rarely actually read the articles that they are voting for (or in Slashdot’s case, commenting on).
Articles at Digg get voted for almost exclusively on the strength of the headline and synopsis, and if people read the article, it’s normally after casting their vote (and/or voicing their opinion on the thing they haven’t read yet). This is not exclusive to these communities, however. It’s pretty much the same thing with any Journalism … writing a strong headline and first paragraph is where the bulk of the effort in writing a news story goes because they understand what it takes to pull people through an article.
Title’s are sometimes so powerful we all get pulled in (see Does Your Follow Through Suck)
Sphere It
October 17th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
The real problem is that interfaces like Digg’s encourage this behavior! It’s really easy to click to Digg something as soon as you see it, but it’s harder to work out where you clicked after you finished reading something (for most of us who open a ton of tabs, read everything, then are finished, say, 30 minutes later).
Instead of delivering you direct to the remote site, they should keep some sort of frame at the top or something so you can Digg it *after* you’ve read it easily.