Cause Controversy From Title To Body Because Of Impact
Posted on November 17, 2012 by Scott
In this article I am going to go slightly beyond Nick Wilson’s article, Writing An Effective Article, by sharing a story about one of my articles and the impact it had. Definitely read Nick’s article, though, because it is well worth it.
I recently wrote an article for a photographer’s blog and being a photography myself, I am very picky about what guest articles to accept or not.
Knowing the article I submitted could, would and should cause controversy, I was happy when the photographer accepted and published it.
Creating An Intriguing Title
My first intention was to catch readers attention, so the article was titled, “Why The Leica M Could Be The Best Digital Rangefinder Or Mirrorless Camera Ever”. What this does is introduce urgency, a strong opinion and without reading the context of the article, invites reactions. At the same time, a keyword, “Best Digital Rangefinder” is in the enough times so the 300 or so people searching for the topic would see the article. My hope is that “Best Mirrorless Camera” will also bring up the article for the 8,000 or so people searching for that keyword.
In the article I talk about the specs on the new camera, and follow-up with my opinion as to why I think it’s the best of its kind. As mentioned, there are a lot of people who do not agree, and even disagree with a vengeance. So within a few hours of publishing the article, there were over 40 comments.
This helps SEO because comments show movement and engagement. Search engine like seeing both, so hopefully the article will do well for the photographer. But that isn’t all the article did, of course. In fact, it made a much larger impact than you might think.
The guest article has brought my own photography website a decent amount of consistent traffic since the minute the article was published. Over 70 people clicked the Facebook Like button on the article, thus sharing it with their friend’s and helping with social signals. There have also been a lot of comments on the photographer’s Facebook page, and my own. The article was Tweeted over 15 times in the few hours and also caused some conversation on Google Plus. For all I know, this article could create a nice ripple effect on Google Plus.
So what did I learn from this?
Whether you are writing an article about photography website templates or rainbows and unicorns, try to cause controversy. As long as you have the ability to back up what you are saying, then go for it. Make that impact.
Make sure your title:
- Portrays Urgency
- Is a Strong Opinion
- Is Open To Reactions
- Includes Your Keyword
Make sure your body:
- States some facts
- States your opinion
- Connects facts to opinion
One of the most important things you can do after publishing a controversial post is to follow-up on comments. You don’t necessarily have to reply to every comment, but one here or there acknowledging that you care, can’t hurt.
Have you published an article like this? Please comment with a link so everyone can check it out and thanks for reading.
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Outstanding post scott! I will be sure to implement the things i learned here to my controversial posts.
Sounds awesome, Stephan. Thank you.
Definitely helped out a few people Scott thanks for sharing!