There is a definite art form to writing blog posts that can give you both the short-term gain of being shareable on Social Media sites, and the long-term gain of ranking well with search engines. Mainly, because you’re trying to reach two different audiences at the same time. Content that’s shared on Social Media sites typically has a lifespan of a few minutes at best as it is quickly replaced on the person’s timeline/stream with additional items. But with search engines, content is cataloged and then retrieved later when a relevant search is made.
So let’s think about the differences in those audiences, and how we reach each:
1 – Social Media sites – Blog post title needs to be catchy and attention-grabbing. An interesting photo that grabs attention also helps for content shared on Facebook and Plus. But the idea is, how can you grab the person’s attention for even a few seconds so you can convince them to click your link?
2 – Search Engine – Here, we need to write content that’s consistent with the search query. You can already see a potential conflict with writing for Social Media sites in that we need that catchy, attention-grabbing title and blog post, but both also have to be CONSISTENT with the content of the blog post. IOW, if we have a cute and sparkly title, but the blog post is crap/inconsistent with blog post title, it not only won’t be Liked, RTed and +1ed, it won’t rank well in search results either.
So we need to write a blog post that has both a catchy title that immediately grabs your attention PLUS one that will include content consistent with the blog post title that will also rank well in search engines. Whew, glad we didn’t make it tough on ourselves
