This led to a good foraging through many blogs for inspiration. What I found was an abundance of information and advice about how to create good headlines. There really is endless amounts of articles that have been written on this subject, so I thought I’d boil a few down for our audience here at Tactical Thinking…

At Copyblogger: How to Write Headlines That Work

In this post Brian Clark, Author of Copyblogger, outlines eight different types of headlines all suited to different situations.

He begins with direct and indirect headlines, i.e. one that states the selling proposition directly or one that uses curiosity to raise a question in the reader’s mind. Here’s a relevant example for our audience:

Direct – “50% off on all 2009 outerwear!”
Indirect – “Why pay full-price for your new jacket?”

He goes on to describe News headlines, How-to headlines, Question and Command headlines, Reason Why headlines and finally Testimonial headlines. Very useful stuff as it opens the doors to many more headline-writing options.

At Wordbiz: 5 Easy Steps to Write More Effective Headlines

This post by Debbie Weil gives five solid steps to writing, as she puts it, “more effective headlines”. The first three steps in her process are excellent and very relevant for our audience here. They are as follows:

1. Appeal to your target audience’s emotions – think easy, quick and simple.
2. Identify their trigger words – use words like easily, reduce, create, deliver, protect.
3. Consider using a software writing tool – perfect for those lacking in time, writing skills or just a little untimely lack of creativity.

At NEWSTECHZILLA: Headlines and Titles – Writing for Readers AND Search Engines

Lastly, I picked out this post by Scott Adcox, as a way to explain the relevance of SEO in crafting better headlines.

Crafting better headlines isn’t just about using appropriate words. Of course, the words have to be relevant to the audience and topic of your article/post. However, your headline must also utilise keywords where possible, to help improve your site’s search engine optimisation.

In Scott’s post he discusses using appropriate URL’s for your articles. He also covers Title Tags – particularly relevant for search engines.

In Summary

When I’m writing any article or post, I’ll always make sure I have a title to begin with, no matter how poor it is. Whilst writing, I’ll revisit this title many many times, helping it evolve with the context of my piece. Unfortunately, this isn’t always enough.

So next time you’re struggling to write a suitable headline or title on the web, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What type of headline do you want to use?
2. Who are your audience?
3. How can you optimise it for search engines?

…And refer to posts above to help you find some answers.

It all depends on what you’re searching for, right? If you already know the name of the business, it makes sense to flick to the appropriate ‘white’ page. But if you only know the name of the service ‘yellow’ is the way to go.

This same rule is applied to Google everyday by millions of users across the world, often without a second thought. One might search for ‘4 wheel drive cars’ or ‘Subaru Legacy’. ‘Backcountry packs’ or ‘DaKine’. Maybe even… ‘Web Design’ or ‘Tactic Group’.

So which approach is typically you? Yellow or white?

Today I came across this post by Seth Godin entitled ‘How to make money with SEO’ – sent to me by my esteemed colleague Doug (thanks for that mate and sorry to steal your thunder). The title did nothing for me so my initial impression was not one of shock and awe, but the first couple of paragraphs certainly got my interest:

There are two ways to use SEO to help your organization. One is reliable and effective, the other is a glorious crap shoot that usually fails but is wonderful when it works. I’ll start with the second.

The most common way to use search engine optimization is to find a keyword (like “plumbing”) and do whatever you can to ‘own’ that word on Google. This is Google as the Yellow Pages (with free ads).

The Yellow Pages are terrific for plumbers, because if you need a plumber, that’s where you’re going to look. Buy the biggest ad, be the first listing, you get calls. Google is a revelation because it’s a super Yellow Pages and it’s free! The problem: how to be the first listing, because being the 40th listing is fairly worthless.

Well the obvious answer to that is paying for a sponsored listing. But for this scenario let’s ignore that. So what’s the alternative so the Yellow Pages?

The other way to use SEO is a bit more organic. (Let’s call it the White Pages approach). It involves owning a keyword that you already own. Do a search on ShoeMoney in Google and you’ll find 340,000 matches. Wanna guess who’s first? ShoeMoney. Why is this surprising? After all, he invented the word and he owns the domain.

Someone hears about Jeremy’s site from a friend or from a blog or from some other source. They want to visit his site and they type it into Google. He told me that he gets five times as much traffic from this search term as any other on Google.

The power of this technique is that with determination and patience, you will certainly win. It requires inventing a trademark and then building a business or service or organization around this trademark that people actually talk about. You want to be able to say to someone, “just type ____ into Google.”

This is the simplest description of the two main SEO strategies I’ve ever come across – hence the post here on Tactical Thinking. But let’s draw some parallels in our own industry…

Type ‘Snowboards’ into Google and you’ll get 5,450,000 results. Quite a lot really. Now type in ‘Lib Tech’. You’ll see Lib Technologies comes up first, but where were they in the ‘Snowboards’ search? Half way down page 6!

Years of persistence and brand building (plus the help of a particular superstar snowboarder) has put the Lib Tech name near the top of recognised brands in the snowboard marketplace. But I ask you this: What would have happened to them if they had just jammed a web site full with key words like ’snowboards’ and hope they might reach the top?

Of course, this is somewhat of a moot point as Lib Tech were around before web sites and have been building their brand for years. But you can see the parallels and hopefully this helps you understand the importance of building a brand over time rather than just getting heavy with SEO and Google Adwords.

Take the time to read the rest of Seth’s post. He finishes it off with a nice and simple step-by-step guide for following his ‘White Pages’ approach.

In this short film from TED, Polish designer/art-director, Jacek Utko, presents a case-study on how good design boosted the the flagging circulation of several eastern European newspapers. His story goes beyond graphic design.

While Jacek is talking about design in a very visual medium, I love his sentiments on going beyond visual design, changing the look of the newspapers and transforming the experience. The business and financial gains he shows are astounding!

Via 37Signals.

Here’s Camilla Stoddart in the witness stand, ready for questioning…

Hi Camilla, thanks for making the time for this interview. Can we start with a brief run down on your experience behind the lens?

“As far as experience goes, I did go to a swanky top London Art School (St Martins) but I didn’t study photography. I am all self taught, and really believe in getting out there, shooting as much as you can and rolling with it. Sure there are lots of technical things that I should know, but over the years I am slowly teaching myself out of trial and error and reaping the benefits, making mistakes, learning from them and experimenting. I find this has helped me grow into a more creative and free-thinking photographer.”

Nice. So a lot of people fancy themselves as a bit of a photographer. Tell me, why should someone commission your services rather than shoot it personally?

“This is where I try not to sound like a ponsy photog right? I really believe that you have an eye or you don’t. As harsh as this sounds, I think it is very true. A singer is born with a good voice, as much as an illustrator is born able to draw. You can teach yourself how to become better at these things, and learn how to get the skills, but to truly thrive in your field I think you have to have natural born talent. Having never been taught how to shoot photos, I feel that I have developed my own style, taste and way of seeing. There are many people out there who can take photos for sure, but to be able to get an image ‘that speaks a thousand words’, takes more than just point and shoot. Told you I was going to sound ponsy…!”

That’s not too ponsy, just say it how it is. Anyway, all these compact point-and-shoot digitals have pretty high mega-pixel ratings nowadays, can you tell us about some of the main differences when compared to your setup?

“Megapixles are a very good selling point for a camera. ‘ooh mine has 10 megapixles, and yours only 7!’ When it comes to SLR (single lens reflex) cameras vs compact cameras, it’s hard to compare things like megapixles. On an SLR the sensor is much bigger than a compact, therefore you can fit a lot more information on there. That combined with professional lenses (they can make all the difference to a crisp clear image), manual settings and accurate focusing, the SLR will always win. That’s not to say that you can’t take a good snap with a point and shoot!

I have a Canon EOS 1D mk III with a bunch of Canon and Sigma professional lenses and strobe flashes. Professional camera equipment doesn’t come cheap and I am always eyeing up what I want next.”

Expensive hey? So what makes a photographer like yourself different to the everyday wedding photographer out there?

“I find a lot of work out there is stale, unimaginative and seen a million times before. It depends on what you are looking for out of a photograph, be it advertising for your company, shots in magazines, or images to tell a story, there is no excuse for boring and shabby images. A lot of photographers I find forget to put their shot in context. Take, for example, a shot of a skier, if you take the skier away from the photograph, is the image still interesting?”

How would your average Joe go about finding photographers with suitable snow and adventure experience, as opposed to your average photographer?

“I would contact me! haha…. It’s a good idea to note photographers names when you are looking through a magazine, or notice a shot you really like. They will usually have a website and contact details on there. I have a bunch of photographers I really respect and I aften find myself admiring their work. It’s good to know what you like, and then you can research to what photographer will suite your needs.”

Okay, so when someone has made the decision that they want to use a pro, what should they be looking out for when selecting their photographer?

“They should like their work first of all. Look at their style, experience, client list, and previous work, from commissioned to published work. Check that their images appear professional and are right for the job in hand.”

What’s the going rates for commissioning a shoot and how does the payment structure work?

“I’m not too sure how other photographers work. But I work on a freelance basis. I can either be commissioned for the day or half day. An hour isn’t usually enough time to get anything done. I also get out there and shoot a lot, and then submit my shots for advertorial or publication. I then sell shot by shot, and each case is usually different as to what the client needs. Magazines are pretty straight forward, and getting into advertorial gets more complex. It all depends on printing numbers, circulation and size of image.

For the day rate the client can use all the shots from that day, but the photog retains copyright to the shot, unless paid for outright but this never really happens.”

How about contracts? Do you often find yourself signing on the dotted line, or are most of your gigs ‘in good faith’?

“I have signed a bunch of contracts, for magazines and companies etc, but usually work is done out of trust. I sell an image for a use outlined in my invoice and I trust that the client doesn’t steal the image for anything more. Photography theft is huge, and the most annoying thing is that the photographer may never find out about it! But it’s the game we play really… I am very careful to always send low resolution images out with my copyright plastered all over.”

And how do the copyright legalities behind the images themselves work, i.e. who owns the rights to the shots afterwards?

“I have never sold the copyright to one of my images. This can get very expensive for the client as they are saying that the image can never be used by the photographer again. As I said before, I usually sell an image to a client with the use outlined in the invoice so there is no confusion over what they are allowed to do with the image.”

Okay that’s pretty clear. Finally, if one of our readers wants to use you for a shoot how should they get in touch and what’s your availability like?

“Please take a look at my Whiteroom Pictures website for examples of my work, portfolio, client list and published work. My contact details are on there so please don’t hesitate to contact me. I am based out of Wanaka in New Zealand from May to Oct and Edinburgh or the Swiss Alps from November through April. I am available for commissioned-based work as well as individual image sales.”

Some final thoughts

There’s a traditional marketing concept called the Purchase Funnel where prospective customers go through a number of different stages before they commit to a purchase. Most often those stages are described with the acronym AIDA: AWARENESS > INTEREST > DESIRE > ACTION.

If you’re web site and and other promotional materials already achieve the Awareness and Interest steps, then consider this; do you think they create Desire?

If not, maybe a pro-shooter can help your site create this third desirability stage in your product or service. This photo of Camilla’s certainly makes me think ‘desire’…

It’s actually a good thing we waited to write this post, as we’ve since performed a fun social media project for our friend, and the interviewee in this post, Camilla over at Whiteroom Pictures.

WRP blog project

Camilla was in the process of re-designing her web site and wanted to develop her brand within the social media world. With a strong Facebook following already, this was easily done with a Wordpress blog. We designed the blog to fit alongside her new web site with very similar aesthetics and layout, but just a few subtle differences. We also created a blogging strategy to assist her as time goes on.

For more information about the project we performed look out for the case study, coming soon on Tactic Group.

In the meantime, let’s get back to the topic at hand…

So why commission a pro photographer?

In our first photography post, we discussed the different methods of sourcing images for your web site. These were:

1. Shoot it yourself
2. Look for public domain images
3. Find Royalty Free images (or stock photography)
4. Rights Managed (or liscenced images)
5. Commission a shoot

We discussed the pros and cons of each option in detail and established that ‘Commissioning a shoot’, whilst expensive and potentially time consuming, provides absolutely unique images with relevant landscapes tailored to you business niche.

Things have changed in the past year. In our current economic climate the above cons certainly make the decision to hire a pro photographer hard to swallow. But let us think about the Return On Investment (ROI) and how it can be realised. Of course it costs to hire a pro, but the investment will offer return in the form of more sales or higher brand esteem. Not expending the cost in the first place will obviously save you money but, on the flip-side, it can miss you the opportunity for increased sales.

You know your business much better than we do, so it’s simply a question of weighing up the odds. However, to help you evaluate these odds we have a professional lined up for an interview next week. So be sure to check back and see the experts perspective.

I’ve just started reading the copywriting guide ‘Words That Work’ by the political consultant and speechwriter, Dr. Frank Luntz. As you’d expect from a book on this topic, the main theme is masterfully condensed into the strapline “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear”.

I was barely three pages in when I read a passage that really caught my attention:

“The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself right into your listener’s shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart. How that person perceives you is even more real, at least in a practical sense, than how you perceive yourself.”

Even though the words above are about speechwriting the advice is just as valid for crafting web content. Further than that, it applies well to other aspects of what we do as web designers and publishers.

Know your users and give them what they want

As the man says, there’s no substitute for knowing and understanding your audience. Research them, their needs and their habits. And when you’re done, research some more. This will help you ‘stuff yourself right into their shoes’.

If your offerings are relevant, your web content is clear and says what customers want to hear, you’ve a good chance that they’ll find you. Once they get there, if your site is intuitive and creates a satisfying experience – you’ll keep customers happy and keep them coming back.

In the age of the Experience Economy user research is vital to making that happen.

Your brand is what your customers think of you

In the last sentence quoted above Luntz claims the way others perceive you is more real than how you perceive yourself. The explosion of social media, online product reviews and digital word of mouth have made this ring true in the world of branding.

Companies are realising that they can’t fully control their brands online – but they can participate in the conversations that shape them.

I hope this riff on user-experience and branding has given you a few ideas, but I wouldn’t like to throw up this call-to-arms without suggesting how to act on it. Well, where to start?

Social media to the rescue

Your customers are out there on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc. and they are talking to each other. Whether or not they are talking about you, they are certainly talking about offerings just like yours.

The opportunity is there to spectate, to learn about your customers and what they think is important. If you’re not already then start monitoring social media discussions for:

• What they are saying about you
• What they are saying about your competitors
• What they are saying about the products and services they buy

There is also great potential to participate in these discussions – talking with your customers rather than talking at them:

• Getting meaningful customer feedback
• Discovering new product ideas or developments
• Managing your reputation and encouraging customers to engage with your brand

That’s barely brushing the surface, but hopefully enough to whet your appetite. We’ll be covering these topics in more detail in the coming months. So look out for more on social media here in the future.

We’ve since come across some fascinating statistics detailing the top ten countries that Twitter receives traffic from. Our international audience may find this rather eye-opening. Check it out…

The most interesting stat here has to be Japan. Making up 39% of the international Twitter traffic, which is 60% of the overall, Japan equates for 23.4% of total Twittering.

This came as a surprise to us here at Tactic Group, but we’re certainly going to look into it further.

Read the report on the Twitter blog for more information.

For the first time senior executives and bloggers stare into their crystal balls to second-guess the events which will shape the industry over the course of the next 12 months

Now before you delve right in, be aware: this is a very long post! There’s some interesting perspectives to be read and a few clashing views (always fun!), but it’s a good insight none-the-less. To save you a bit of time we’ve picked out the six most relevant points for our specific audience…

From Graham Donoghue, Travelsupermarket

“Customers will be more promiscuous. Whereas they may have looked at four websites before making a decision on their holiday in 2008, they will be looking at probably at least eight in 2009.”

Good news for any sites not appearing on the first page of Google!

From Francesca Ecsery, Cheapflights UK

“People will be more prepared to shop around for a good deal. Price will play a vital role in securing consumers in 2009. As the world’s economic position continues to dominate the news, people will think smarter about where their money goes and will be prepared to take the time to find a good deal. Consumers are expected to cut back spending on items such as clothing, new home furnishings and cares, however recent reports show holidays are the one thing consumers will resist giving up in a recession.”

Bookings may come later, but they’ll still come. At least, we hope so.

From Neil Mason, Foviance:

“The seamless integration of Web 2.0 content to provide a richer customer experience will also be key in 2009. The multi-channel silos that create the barriers between web, mobile, call centre and high street physical store (for those that are still around!) will no longer be tolerated by consumers and organisations that fail to deliver a consistent customer experience will begin to suffer the consequences.”

Experience, experience, experience! Note that word.

From Steve Evans, lastminute.com

“Usability – people are going to start to recognise the massive ROI to be had from making your site and particularly your booking flow usable. Given the economic climate I think we’ll see less ‘ground-breaking’ new functionality and more improvement of what exists to make conversion easier for customers.”

Hmmm, yes – improving what’s there already. Certainly seems more valuable right now, than splashing out the big bucks on, I quote, “ground-breaking new functionality”.

From Mel Carson, Microsoft AdCenter

“More brands will be getting into social media, and I don’t just mean Facebook and Twitter, but understanding and valuing online feedback from blogs and forums and acting on it will pay dividends.”

We agree. Low-cost online interactive marketing will become crucial this year.

From Justin Cooke, Fortune Cookie

“User experience budgets will double as companies realise that experience is everything.”

Ah, there it is again; Experience. Want to know our predictions for travel industry in 2009?

Providing your customers with the best possible experience (online and offline), giving a ‘money well spent’ feeling, will be the a-factor in this year’s game.

Well, we’re back on the business blogging buzz with some new thoughts and ideas to share with you. Our latest project, amphitheatre, has provided us with some amazing insights into the world of large-scale, multi-author blogging. First on the agenda; how to increase user interactivity through voting polls.

Some call it link-baiting. I think of it as improving a site’s user-interactivity to increase the number of return visitors.

First, let’s just clarify why one would want to increase their web site’s user-interactiveness. If a web site truly engages it’s users there is a greater chance of those users coming back to the site, improving the number of repeat visits as well as visitor loyalty. Think about some of the web sites that you visit on a regular basis. I think you’ll find that many of them encourage your involvement in one aspect or another.

Polls and surveys are a strong method to encourage this user-interactivity.

Why run a poll on your site

Polls and surveys not only provide opportunity to interact with a web site but they give visitors the opportunity to voice an opinion and even see the results of a topic that interests them. But that’s not all…

• They start discussions, which in turn increases repeat visits.
• They can provide you with valuable research statistics for your product or business.
• They can increase the number of incoming links as people frequently send the URL on to others.
• And, probably most importantly, they demonstrate that your web site is alive and kicking!

How to set up a poll

Adding a poll or survey to your web site is not as difficult as you might think. There’s a variety of freely available resources on the net that can make the process super-simple. Check out PollDaddy and Quiz-o-Matic ‘76 for some examples. However, there’s a little more to it than just installing and creating a new poll – think strategy! Here’s an excellent ‘how to’ article on different polling techniques.

At Tactic Group we run many of our sites and blogs (including this one) on the Wordpress platform. There’s a fantastic plugin available on Wordpress, called WP-Polls that we use frequently. We’ve even got some examples for you…

A few months back we decided to run a photo competition on our amphitheatre blog. Whilst we didn’t receive as many photographic entries as we would have liked, when it came to voting time our traffic increased by about 1000% over the space of two days. We were quite astounded at this dramatic increase.

Granted, we had some nice prizes up for grabs and there was definitely some underlying motivations (as the public decided who the winners were), but what a great way to increase traffic and encourage user-interaction on a web site!

We’ve since been embracing polls in a variety of forms; the latest one being a new survey at the same site, designed more for research purposes than increasing traffic. We’ll be following this survey with another poll very soon, delving a little deeper into the habits, needs and wants of the amphitheatre readers.

Share your polling ideas right here

We’d love to hear about your ideas for polls and surveys. We may even be able to help evolve an idea into a viable solution. Please, we encourage you to comment below with any thoughts you have on the matter. Thanks.