Are Your Titles Twitter Optimized?
If you like sharing your articles, press releases, editorials and any other type of content on Twitter, you want to have it stand out. You want an attention-grabbing title, and you most certainly want a “re-tweetable” title.
Because Twitter has a 140 characters (including spaces) limit, your best bet would be to write titles that are shorter than that. But keep in mind that followers who retweet your tweets usually include your Twitter name in their messages too. And when a good title goes viral, followers of your followers might pick it up, and, respecting the unwritten Twitter etiquette, they will include other Twitter user names, yours becoming a “via” part of the retweet. Does it sound confusing? The examples below should make things clear:
Original tweet:
Are Your Titles Twitter Optimized?
Retweet by one of my followers
RT @miguelstil Are Your Titles Twitter Optimized? #tips
Retweet by a follower of my follower
RT @philbo Are Your Titles Twitter Optimized? #tips via @miguelstil
So how do you optimize titles for Twitter?
Keep them short
If you paid attention, the Twitter character limit doesn’t allow for long titles, so keep them short. Short titles are a good SEO technique anyway. Keep in mind that even search engines index only 60 characters of the page title. If you are one of the people who think that SEO is BS but you love social media, keep in mind this argument: short titles are memorable, reader friendly and shareable.
Make them interesting
An old school journalistic rule: titles are microcontent, and your only chance to actually grab the attention of the reader. Online or offline, the rules are the same. If you want a few examples, read Brian Clark’s 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work.
Make them relevant
Don’t title your articles 10 Ways to Peal Potatoes if you are writing about pealing apples.
Keep in mind that good titles mean good conversions; and online conversions translate through traffic, clicks on ads, sales.
On Twitter, if you manage to capture the attention of the community with a good title, the conversion might also translate through more followers.
Are these tips you follow when you write your titles? Do you have some other tips to share? Please join the conversation.
