1. Getting People to Buy Your Stuff

I want to inspire you. So, I tell you about a great thing:

"Here's a great thing for you."

What I left unsaid but was heard, by you, is:

"Yeah, it would be a great thing for me, if you bought my stuff."

And, then I go on to say to you:

"I have excellent instructions about how you can achieve this great thing."

You respond with:

"Yeah, it is a great thing."

But don't do anything. Because you have also said to yourself something like:

"Looks like a lot of work."

So, I need to hear what you didn't say. I need to have a reply. Something like:

"Because doing this great thing will produce these wonderful benefits that you have always wanted. And it's easy."

And, I want you to say in return:

"Ok, let me see at your instructions."

Anything else is a failure. I did not inspire you.

2. Getting People to Click on Your Headlines

How can we inspire our readers to click on our headlines?

Let's look at an real example.

Last week when I was researching for my article, "And, What Do You Do?", I searched using this keyword phrase "how to improve about us pages".

The top article listed for this keyword phrase is Jeff Hayden's article which is called "8 Ways to Improve Your 'About Us' Page". (By the way, you should read Jeff's articles carefully. He is excellent at making the complex clear.)

But, Hayden's article also appeared in the 8th spot.

Here is picture of the two entries which were returned from search, the search engine results page or SERP, when I searched for "how to about us pages."

Which one would you click on? Headline 1 or Headline 2?

Headline 1.

Headline 2.

Ok, both have the same headline in bold. But, the description of the benefits to the reader are very different.

Headline 1 gives a plausible reason to why I should care. Because "chances are, [your about us page] is one of the most visited pages on your website. It's also probably the weakest."

Most visited and the weakest? Got it. Ok, I want to know why & I am going to click.

Headline 2 offers the reader no such incentive. It is true, interesting, but why should I care? Feh, big deal. Move on, nothing to read here.

3. Geeky Stuff About Open Graph Mark-Up & Meta Tags

Figuring out how to get the description of your article to show up is an interesting exercise.

Let's take a look at the underlying html for Jeff's article.

(You will have to blow this image up to its full view by clicking on it to read it.)

Ok, when Jeff's article was shared into a LinkedIn group, LinkedIn looked at these two lines of meta description.

1. <meta property="og:title" content="8 Ways to Improve Your 'About Us' Page" />

2. <meta property="og:description" content="Chances are, it's one of the most-visited pages on your site. It's probably also the weakest. Here's how to fix it." />

This tells the LinkedIn bot to describe the article with themeta property "og:description". And that is good, because the description makes the headline more clickable. Good LinkedIn bot. But not great, because the title is repeated again before the description of what benefits reading the article have.

On the other hand, the Google bot ignored these mark-up instructions and returned the first line from Jeff's article as a description. Bad Google bot. And that is bad, because the first line offers no incentive to read the article.

This is not what Jeff had in mind. Naughty, Google bot.

How do we know what Jeff had in mind? Look at his article:

Jeff clearly understand the function of the second headline -- in this case, to inspire us to move down the page and read his instructions. About a great thing.

4. Franchise-Info's Implementation of this Great Thing - An Extra Headline

We don't expect you to hand code your Franchise Directory page or entry. Or become SEO experts, or anything difficult like that.

You just want your headline that people saw on LinkedIn to be clicked more, so your article is read more often. (If they aren't reading you, they won't do business with you.)

Do you want us do to that for you?

More about Rich Snippets, and much more. Take a look ... click here ...

If you liked this idea, sign up for the LinkedIn Marketing & Advertising Tips from Franchise-Info newsletter.

Or, for more information on the Franchise-Info Business Directory, call Joe at 1-443-502-2636 or email Joe direct [email protected]