How to write headlines that work well with Google | #PR #ContentMarketing

From Ragan's: PR Daily 

When a press release, blog post, or article is indexed by Google and shows up in search results, the maximum character count runs between 65 and 80 characters (including spaces) before being cut off. Some rich snippets might show more, some less. 

Always plan for the low end, just in case. The actual length is determined by pixel size and total width, rather than a specific character count. (Newspaper headline writers quickly learn that the lowercase letters f, i, j, l, r, and t take up less space than other letters, especially m and w.) 

Write headlines that work in both the long and the short versions. A study showed that 80 percent of press release headlines were too long. Avoid making this common mistake.

How to execute a publicity stunt so well that it becomes legitimate news

Never underestimate the news value of a really, really, REALLY well-executed PR stunt. It takes courage to fully commit to a publicity stunt. The Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson went "all in" with this one, and boy does it pay off.




So what makes this work?

1. It's visual, so TV loves it.
2. It's bigger than life -- always a key to attracting attention.
3. It starts with kids. This wouldn't be nearly so cool if it had started with engineers.

First rule of content: Be the show

James O'Brien at Mashable writes about the Red Bull content strategy:

The idea central to content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return. Instead of the commercial, be the show. Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story. The value returned is often that people associate good things with — and return to engage with — the brand.

3 ways to pique interest with a great title

Roger C. Parker at the Content Marketing Institute says:

• Metaphors make titles easier to understand and remember by giving readers a mental picture or point of comparison for the subject you’re talking about. Jay Conrad Levinson’s “Guerrilla Marketing” communicates its promise of describing unconventional ways to achieve success, by likening the marketing tactics to tactics used in guerrilla warfare. Another metaphor-based series is the “Chicken Soup for the…” series, which communicates a warm, nurturing feeling by referencing the meal that mothers and grandmothers have traditionally served to their family members who need some TLC when they’re under the weather.
• Alliteration, or rhymed consonants, also makes titles easier to remember. Examples include Cliff Atkinson’s “Beyond Bullet Points,” Dr. Frank Luntz’s “Words that Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear,” and Lynne Felder’s “Writing for the Web: Creating Compelling Web Content Using Words, Pictures, and Sound.”
• Curiosity can be aroused by unexpected words or contradictory terms, which can help set your content apart from “duller” treatments of the same topic. An example is David Chilton’s “The Wealthy Barber.” The contradiction between “wealth” and “barber” compels readers to find out “how” and “why” barbers can become wealthy.

Visit CMI to download Parker's 10-point checklist for creating titles that will sell your content to your audiences.

There is more than one way to be a journalist these days

That's a central theme in this brief video from PBS Off Book:

Create a web site in seconds from your smartphone

Here's an idea: How about an app that let's you quickly and easily create a website from your smartphone? In this video, Robert Scoble interviews the founder of a company that has created just that.  It's call Zapd.



The potential applications for the mobile publicist are enormous. Using Zapd, you could create mobile, social web sites that:

• Let you cover an event in real time, curating all the coverage onto a unique site while also pushing the coverage to Facebook.
• Allow your client's employees to collaborate on a public project from their smartphones while still allowing you to manage the results.
• Let your customers crowd-cover an event or collaborate on a specific subject.
• Host a real-time employee blog that allows contributors to post from anywhere in real time.
• Allow your CEO to communicate with stakeholders in real time.
• Establish an instant base of important information for stakeholders and media during a company crisis.

That's just off the top of my head. Going to play with this over the next few weeks and let you know how it performs. If you have any interesting thoughts on this, let me know.

Short on time and need content? Create a round-up story

Allison King at Ragan's explains:

Do you have 10 stories on the same topic? Pull them together in a list or primer that allows readers to access all the resources in a single location.

Write a short introduction, and include brief descriptions of each item with links to the original pieces. You'll drive traffic to a new piece of content and give a second life to older articles readers might have missed. 

Here are four other ways to create content quickly.

Meograph lets you package your client's story in terms of time and space

From Rachel McAthy at journalism.co.uk:

Multimedia storytelling tool Meograph has announced a number of new updates to the platform, including making the geographical pinpointing of a 'moment' within a story optional.

The tool, which enables journalists to plot the times and places of a story on a map and timeline, was launched in July this year. Users can also add multimedia content to each 'moment', such as images, YouTube videos and links to outside articles, as well as audio narration.

The end result is an embeddable Meograph, a playable multimedia package that documents a story.