3 Ways to Craft Great Article Titles to Build Your Online Business

If you are trying to build your online presence, article marketing is an excellent way to drive targeted traffic to your site. When done correctly, submitting articles to various article directories will raise interest for your products and help you generate leads that will be hungry for what you are selling.

If you've spent some time browsing the article directories, though, you've probably noticed that there are thousands of articles competing for the same clients in nearly every product niche. Your goal is to write articles that stand out in the crowd, so you can build your client list.

The best way to make sure that people read an article is to craft an effective title. Your title is the gateway to a loyal reader base that will follow through to your website, so they can become loyal customers.

So how do you write an effective article title?

A great title will do three things:

1. It will make it clear to your readers what your article is about. Article titles that are vague or misleading won't help your business. People will click on the title, see that your article isn't what they are looking for, and hastily click the "back" button to find another article.
2. It will promise a specific benefit to the reader. People are looking for solutions -- that's why they are searching article directories in the first place. Tell your readers what they will gain from reading your article.
3. It will compel your readers to click on your article title and read your content. Your readers should know that when they read your article, they will be making good use of their time.

Let's look at each of these elements a little more closely.

Making it clear to your readers what your article is about

Your title should convey the topic of your article as specifically as possible. If your article is about finding ways to save money on health insurance, for example, A vague title like "The Truth About Insurance" isn't going to get many people to read your content. Potential readers will ask themselves:

• What "truths" are there to know about insurance?
• What kind(s) of insurance is this person talking about?
• Do I really care about the "truth about insurance"?

Be specific, so readers will find exactly what they are looking for when they click on your article.

Promising a specific benefit to your readers

After you have nailed down exactly what your article is about, you should consider what benefit your readers will realize by reading your article. It should help them in some way -- financially, professionally, emotionally, etc. It should also naturally lead to the content of the article.

Using the health insurance example, here are a few titles that promise a benefit to the readers:

"10 Ways to Save Money on Health Insurance"

"You Can Save Hundreds on Health Insurance with This Simple Step"

"Cut Your Health Insurance Bill in Half in Just 15 Minutes"

See the promised benefits? The payoff for the readers is that they will learn "10 ways to save money on health insurance", "how to save hundreds on health insurance with a simple step", or "how to save half on health insurance in 15 minutes".

Note: Your article should always follow through on these promises. If the reader gets to the end of the article and hasn't realized the promised benefit, there's no way he or she is going to visit your website for more information.

Compelling people to read your article

Aside from specifying the content of your article and promising a benefit, your title should give your potential readers the impression that your article is worth their time. It has to be well-written, gramatically correct, and free of overblown language.

Don't use abbreviations or "netspeak" in your titles. Don't use excessive punctuation or other non-alphanumeric characters. Your title should be simple, direct, and to the point.

Also, trying to lure readers with unreasonable claims, such as "You Can Get Health Insurance for Free Right Now!" will turn off potential readers. Internet users look at every claim with a discerning eye, and can spot a hyped-up promise right away.

Use these tips when crafting your article titles, and you will notice an increase in readership and conversions.

In a future post, I will tell you about 4 elements of your article content that will help you drive readers to your website, so you can start making more sales.

I wish each of you a happy and prosperous New Year!

Lee Rowley

Java Joint Media

www.javajointmedia.com

Are Squeeze Pages a Bad Idea?

I received an email this morning from a client that asked whether or not she should use squeeze pages as part of her list building strategy. Since this is a question I receive quite often, I decided to share my thoughts on squeeze pages with our readers.

In case you aren't familiar with this marketing tool, squeeze pages are dedicated pages (and often, a dedicated website) that uses long copy to entice readers to subscribe to the owner's email marketing list. Squeeze pages usually have few or no outbound links, to minimize the reader's temptation to click away from the page.

Squeeze pages also often use incentives, such as free reports, email mini-courses, or web-based tools, to get visitors to give up their email addresses.

I can't really discount the value of squeeze pages -- a number of internet marketers are very successful with squeeze pages, and have built impressive marketing lists by promoting them along with their full websites and other marketing tools.

Squeeze pages have a few distinct advantages. First, they are fairly easy to build. If you use dedicated URLs for your squeeze pages, you won't have to worry about checking your links or making sure that multiple pages compliment each other visually. You can use a website creation tool such as PageBreeze to easily create squeeze pages in just a couple of hours each.

Second, squeeze pages are easy to optimize because of the long copy style and the level of description you will need to use to convince visitors to opt in to your email marketing list. Once you have selected your keywords, you can quickly write copy for your squeeze pages around your keywords, without having to check the keyword density for multiple pages.

Third, squeeze pages allow you to easily segment different product groups you may have available on your main website. You can use squeeze pages to put your visitors in the correct mindframe to be receptive to product offers, and once they have subscribed to your list, you can use email marketing efforts to further entice your prospects to buy certain products. Once they have decided to buy, you can redirect them to the correct page on your main website. After the sale, you can introduce them to other products on your website, or direct them to new squeeze pages to promote other products.

My one reservation about squeeze pages is that many marketers load them with content similar to strong sales copy. When I land on squeeze pages and see long, drawn-out copy loaded with Impact font headings, bullet points, and testimonial boxes, I find the benefits (the free products) as quickly as I can. If I can't find them right away, I find something else to do. I don't have time to read tomes of website content lauding some free product that may or may not be worth reading.

Maybe I've just seen so many squeeze pages that they're beginning to lose their effectiveness. I know I'm not alone in losing my patience with squeeze pages -- I'm hearing from more and more internet users that are starting to groan every time they see one.

As effective as squeeze pages have been for internet marketers, I have to wonder if more and more people are going to burn out on squeeze pages over the next few years. If that happens, marketers will need to quickly drum up some other way of building opt in lists.

My short answer is that I don't see anything wrong with squeeze pages right now, but I'm not sure they're a good long term strategy. While squeeze pages are not jet on their collective deathbed, I'm cautious about relying on them as a permanent marketing tool.

To Your Success,

Lee Rowley
Java Joint Media
www.javajointmedia.com

Welcome to the Java Joint Media Blog!

Hello, and welcome to our company blog! Over the coming months, Carla and I will be posting information on how to use your website content and print materials to build your business. We will explore sales and marketing techniques, article marketing, pay-per click advertising, and many other techniques you can use to increase your traffic and make people hungry to buy your products!

We hope that you find our posts both interesting and useful. Our goal is to help you make your business more profitable, while working less. One way we do this is by giving you information to streamline your marketing operations, and to automatically tap into your audience's needs through compelling content. Of course, we can also create the content for you -- you can focus on other areas of our business, knowing that we are putting 20+ years of copywriting and editing experience to work for you!

Also, if you haven't done it already, make sure you sign up for our newsletter at www.javajointmedia.com -- we save the most powerful techniques and tips for our subcribers. You'll also receive discount offers on our services, and bonuses you can't get anywhere else!

For example, we're putting the finishing touches on a program that will make you money just for referring clients to us. We're not talking about some tiny referral fee here -- we're talking about a referral percentage of each and every project fee we earn from a client you sent us! You will find more details about that in our newsletter in the coming weeks.

To Your Success,

Lee Rowley
Java Joint Media