Are you feeding your blog posts on Twitter and Facebook? If so, you need to pay attention to the first 15-20 words or 100 characters – usually the title and first few words of the first sentence.
Not only are keywords important here for the search engines, but you also need to see what your feeds are going to look and feel like when limited to only a few words. Make people want to read the full post with those first few words.
It’s fairly easy to set it up so your blog posts are automatically fed to your Facebook and Twitter pages. I’m no tech wizard, but I was able to do this, following instructions that I’m sure you can find on the web through Google searches. Denise has posted about this on Buildabetterblog.com. (See related posts at the end of this).
When you do, however, pay attention to the first 15-20 words of your post, including the title. These words are what will show up in the short little feeds on Facebook and Twitter. Make them count.
Here are some examples: Today on my Facebook and Twitter pages, I’m seeing this:
- BlogSquad: 8 Reasons Why Client Questions Make Great Blog Content: Questions from clients make great blog posts.
I wonder if this could have been more interesting if I hadn’t repeated what I just said in the headline in the first sentence of the post.
Other examples:
Relevant Content: Search Engine Bread Crumbs: On our 5 Traps of Internet Marketing teleclass yesterday
Blog Frequency: More is Better, More & Useful is More Better: In a recent poll of 1096 bloggers over at
Testimonials & The Recommendation Age: Your Clients Will Market for You: Your marketing must be done through
Social Networking; A great resource or simply a waste of time? It seems at every turn we are hearing
You see how important the first few words of your post become? Here’s how to determine what’s going to show up in a twitter feed: Copy and paste your headline and first sentence into a word doc. Use the tools function and word count feature. It will give you a word count and a character count. Determine what your feed will look like if only the first 15-20 words are used.
If you think about this ahead of time, at least you can change the first sentence to be more appealing.
Related Posts:
Twitter: There is a point
Twitter is gaining massive momentum
Twitter is Sucking me In
Facebook Can Drive More Readers to Your Blog
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