The title of a blog post is extremely important.  Most blogging software takes the title and uses it both internally and external in the management of content.  Some places where the title of the blog appears are:

• The URL of the post.
• The H1 title or the actual post titles that a reader sees.
• The HTML title tag

The problem you will find in most blog posts is that the HTML “title tag” is the single most important piece of content to a search engine but is often written to target human interests.   HTML title tags should be strategically used to drive search engine traffic versus copy that entices human readers.  According to a post in High Rankings, Title tags are considered to be in the big three which also includes visible copy and inbound link anchor text.  Still they are often overlooked by web masters and amateur bloggers.

Most blogging software and websites will allow title tags to be defined independently of content.  This is very important as humans and search engines are two different audiences.  I’m going to use a post on the website/blog of McCuistion TV as an example.

On October 25th, 2009, McCuistion TV broadcast a show on addiction which featured Chris Lawford Kenedy.   The title of the show was “The Causes of Addiction”.  The title of this show is excellent for human beings in that it is a teaser eluding to the fact that the show will reveal some of the causes of addiction.  From a search engine perspective, however, this title leaves a lot on the table.

The 2 word keyword pair “addiction causes” gets about 5,400 searches a month in Google.  The downside is that there are over 10 billion pages associated with this keyword pair in Google’s index.  Chris Lawford Kennedy gets about 2,000 searches per month and Chris Lawford Kennedy adiction only has 38,000 pages associated with it.  Though there are more searches associated with “addiction causes” the real opportunity is around Chris Lawford’s name the competition is much more approachable.  Thus, we published the McCuistion TV post “The Causes of Addiction” with a title tag that read “The Causes of Addiction – Christopher Lawson Kennedy”.  The result is that this post ranks in the top 4 hits in Google for both Lawford’s name as well as his name combined with the keyword “addiction”.

Title tags are very important as they are a blogger and/or webmaster’s interface to search engines.

Marketing Bits co-host Jerod Morris was asked by Glenn Moore to attend Sports Media 360 in Cleveland, OH  to participate on a panel discussing credibility online.   The event was put together by The Dugout Sports Show (OKG Media) and Media Frenzy Communications.
The discussion on the panel was excellent so I thought I’d share with our listener base.  A special thanks to Sports Talk Cleveland for the audio feed and to Glenn Moore putting the event together.

The panel members are:

Brad Zibung – “The Heckler”, Founder/Publisher
Greg Bedard - Green Bay Packers Beat Writer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Jerod Morris – Midwest Sports Fans

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As highlighted in National Public Radio’s story, “Facebook, MySpace Divide Along Social Lines“, Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace in 2005 at the height of its popularity in social networking.  Today, the tides have changed as Facebook and its estimated 95M visitors clearly dominates the social networking niche of Web 2.0.  This is so much the case that early this week the Financial Times broke a story where MySpace all but concedes defeat in the social networking arena and describes its future as an entertainment hub.  Though the facts are clear, there really hasn’t been much discussion on how MySpace lost its popularity nor the lessons learned in this curious case.  Well, we stumbled upon some insight during a podcast we did with Aaron Bollinger of KickApps who we came to find out during the podcast had written a book called “The MySpace Social Guide”.  We were so excited about a hallway conversation that ensued after our podcast with him that we went back into the studio and fired up the recording equipment to capture the conversation.

Join episode host Jerod Morris as he discusses the demise of MySpace and its brand with Aaron Bollinger.

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Where small businesses strive to participate in the social media phenomenon, larger enterprises are looking to create a social media experience on their Internet real estate.  The conversations can start anywhere from the boardroom to the chief marketing officer’s office and almost always end up in the IT department.  This begs the question of whether to build or buy a social media platform.  So, we brought in Aaron Bollinger from KickApps to have that discussion.

KickApps is a early stage company that creates one of the industry’s premier social media platforms.  One way to look at it is that KickApps is to social media outside the firewall what Microsoft’s Sharepoint Server is to corporate portals inside the firewall.  Aaron Bollinger is a business development manager with KickApps based out of Austin, TX.  When he was on one of his regular visits to Dallas, Jerod and I thought we’d lock him in our studios to discuss KickApps and social media.  What we weren’t expecting to happen was a conversation that got so interesting that we had to cut a separate podcast for one of the topics—the demise of MySpace.

In this interview we learn about KickApps and discuss Aaron’s background prior to joining KickApps.  This uncovered the fact he was the author of a book on MySpace called “MySpace Social Guide“.   We also touch upon a very early career venture of Aaron and Jerod called Flash Sports Tonight.

Whether you are a professional marketer interested in learning about KickApps or have simply had a rough day and want to listen to an entertaining conversation, this is one of the best interviews we’ve done to date.

(FTC Disclaimer:  Aaron Bollinger conducted this interview as a courtesy to Orangecast Social Media; NO SPONSORSHIP has been provided by KickApps and any favorable comments we make about the platform are because WE LIKE their platform)

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