Sean Donahue

Ecommerce Content Advice: Take a Cue from Digg

June 10th, 2008

Choosing the right title for white papers and webinars can mean the difference between catching your prospects’ attention and being overlooked in a sea of competing ecommerce content. For some ideas on creating titles that get attention, check out the homepage of the popular social bookmarking site Digg.com.

Eric Myers, Director, Internet Marketing, Quest Software, adopted a new white paper and webcast naming strategy after noticing patterns in the stories that frequently land on the site’s homepage. Titles that get attention include:

o Numbered lists of any kind

o Insider tips or “secrets” behind a particular topic

o Breaking news

“I hate to call it tabloid style, but that’s what it is,” says Myers.

Without changing the content itself, he found ways to adopt Digg-style titles and formats for his marketing content. For example, “Best Practices for Maintaining SQL Servers” became “Top 10 Mistakes on SQL Server.”

The result has been more effective white paper and webcast campaigns (though he doesn’t have a hard number to quantify the boost in response). He even saw an old, tired white paper generating new leads after he repositioned it with a new title.

So, monitor Digg and other social bookmarking sites for a week or so. See what kinds of stories get the most attention, and look for tactics to use in your own content titling strategy.

And here are a couple links that also offer white paper/webinar titling advice:

Why a Good Title Makes a White Paper

http://www.whitepapersource.com/writing/writing_titles/

Tips on Terrific Titles for White Papers

http://www.thatwhitepaperguy.com/article_titles.html

Categories: Business Technology Marketing, Business To Business, Online Marketing Tags: , ,



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