Blogging Tip of the Day: Vol. 55

Today's Tip: Let's talk about the "Snappy Headline Syndrome" which seems to be a the biggest blogging tip since sliced bread. I play the title game with most of my posts. The fact of the matter is, that almost every title I create to a post is for my own amusement and rarely helps get readership. Actually I am going to point out that snappy headlines can bury your blogging career faster than anything, and it's why I get a case of the sniggers whenever I see a "Blogging Tips" or an "SEO" site go down in flames. Tricking people into reading your through catchy titles and search engine optimization works for an extremely short period of time, and when people start equating you with "garbage" then you are just the source of ridicule at the top of search engine results. This especially looks bad when you finally quit and YOU are the the source of an obviously outdated site at the top of the search engine results, and some jerk like myself comes along and analyzes why you are a failure.

My two biggest blog posts (by a WIDE margin) have the amazingly catchy titles of "Blogging Tip of the Day: Vol. XX" and "The Crow's Gym Thoughts: Vol. XX" and I have about 90 days of data to prove that. The "Snappy Headlines" crowd have a post here or there with some astronomical numbers that just prove that PT Barnum was right about a sucker being born every minute. They don't have much data on what happens when a sucker realizes they are a sucker. They usually tend to become an enemy do they not? If you find yourself constantly going after the big picture "tricks" and not working on the content of your brand, then you might lose the best branding that you have which is YOU. I've said it before and I will say it again, but the only person who can really destroy your brand is you, so don't get stuck in the trap of "tricking" people into reading unless you are damn sure that you are worthy of being read.