Plea to SL Bloggers: Clear Links, Names, & Titles, Please!

If you blog about Second Life and other virtual worlds, know that I love to blog your most interesting posts on New World Notes, and try to do so every week (especially on Fridays), which usually sends hundreds (sometimes thousands) of new readers your way. But pretty much any time I find good posts to feature on NWN, I discover they're often crippled in some way that makes me less inclined to blog them. Now, you're totally free to blog however you like, but just in case you're interested, here's some common problems I come across on Second Life blogs which frustrate me -- and, I suspect, your regular readers:

• Posts with vague titles: The post title is the most important part of the post -- it tells your readers what it's about, and it's your first and probably only chance to convince them it's worth their time to keep reading. That's particularly important for potential readers who only see the post title in RSS feeds or social media sharing titles. Use keywords, too, especially "Second Life" or "SL", so Google can also figure out that your post is relevant to people searching for SL content. (About 20% of NWN traffic comes from Google from those very kinds of searches.)
• Posts without links or full names: Many posts will mention SL content without mentioning the full account name of the person who created it, or worse, fail to include links to the relevant SLurl, SL Marketplace, or blog. To make sure your post is useful and informative to your readers (including me) always include full names and relevant links. It's also a good idea to make the link fairly large and include descriptive text, like so:

This is a pretty crappy link because it's so short and vague.

Click here for an example of a good link, because it's long and and clear.

Here ends my semi-regular rant. If you have your own blogging gripes to share (including mine) please share in Comments -- just be civil and constructive.

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Comments

[Whimsy Winx]

I think taking the time to spell out the Store Name is sufficient as that's how they market their buisness. Providing a slurl/link to their store/slmarketplace is really crucial as well.

As for post titles, guilty as charged, most of mine are whatever song was in my head/last.fm/pandora/inworld stream/itunes. I'm always jealous of those that had the fore-thought to name theirs Look # in sequential order. For evenst though, Hair Fair in particular for me, I like to make sure I state the event and store. I

[Seymore Steamweaver]

Hamlet, LOVE your articles and all the other contributors articles, but my one gripe i have with this blog is on the main page you can't click the articles title to get to the article page. You have to click the "continue reading" link at the end of the article preview.

And the part that shows just how intelligent I am not is day after day I still click the damn article titles expecting them to open up a new page (like every other blog on the planet.)

[OMGBBQ]

So the request here is for other bloggers to do a better job so that when you blog about their blog (similar to writing news about news), it's easier for you.

rgr that!

[Hamlet Au]

"it's easier for you"

Yes, especially because I already have dozens of SL blogs in my RSS feed, and try to be diligent about browsing as many as possible. The alternative is to blog them a lot less, but I'd rather not do that.

"You have to click the 'continue reading' link at the end of the article preview."

Yeah, sorry, I wish it were different, but I think that's just how Typepad works. Oh yeah, protip: USE WORDPRESS.

[Indigo Mertel]

I have to second that. When I share posts I often have to add a comment to give a hint of the post content. Most of the times the titles are so vague it is hard to understand what the post is about. I can see quite a difference on click-throughs when I add a comment.

On the other hand... Hamlet, you write the most descriptive titles but also the longest ones in the SL blogosphere. I often have to edit your titles because they don't fit the 140 chars limits. A share on Twitter is made by the blog name, title, separators, link and hashtag. Ex:

New World Notes: Steam Adding Creativity Software in September - Important Context for SL's Move to Service http://bit.ly/NkcdfS #SecondLife

Some of your titles don't fit that limit and need heavy editing.

[Hamlet Au]

Haha yeah, I try to make them Tweetable length, but they often get chunkier than I want -- very grateful that you share them anyway!

[SpaceCase]

Regarding the "Continue reading" links, I find them confusing as well. I've seen other typepad blogs that display full text of each post, so I'm guessing maybe it's a setting in a control panel or theme? Might be worth looking into if you're so inclined. :)

[Dave Bell]

In some ways we're talking basic journalism, headline and lede and such, and sometimes I do see some pretty shoddy attention-grabbing headlines, which just aren't supported by the article. That's not here, but lets look at what you do, Hamlet.

Take as an example the headline Indigo quoted:

Steam Adding Creativity Software in September - Important Context for SL's Move to Service

It that headline a good one? I think it's weak, because of its length. And the words are maybe a little sophisticated for a headline.

How about this:

Steam Sells Non-Game Software Soon - SL Fits Better

There's some of the active/passive voice aspects creeping in there, and I kind of like the alliteration. You make the claims clear in the first paragraph, the lede, which is often partially quoted by Google.

The Steam software service is expanding in September to add "Creativity Software" to its range. This change would make the service a better fit with Second Life, which combines game and creativity elements, and which recently announced plans to be available through Steam.

That does feel a little long, to be honest.

Anyway, a lot of this standard journalism format is driven by the wire services, who. in the days of print, wanted to make it easy to cut a story to fit a gap on the page. Now we're on the internet, and concerned with Tweets and Google, and the whole pattern may be outmoded. But grabbing the attention of the reader still matters.

[Hamlet Au]

All good points. Wish I could hire you as my editor. :)

[roblem hogarth]

Vague titles? Fashion bloggers should be as creative with their titles as they are with their photography and descriptions. "Black hat, brown shirt with coat" may be accurate but no one is going to click that link. We are talking fashion here, not a tech blog. Of course when you are done with the creativity, document the outfit. Simple list of items with accurate store names and links.

[Hamlet Au]

It's possible to be creative while also being specific. Also, specificity means you'll have a lot more readers. For fashion posts, just putting "SL" and a variation of "fashion" (style, couture, etc) in the title will probably give it good SEO.

[Ravyn Rozensztok]

Thanks for the tips Hamlet; I hadn't even considered mentioning Second Life in my blog titles. I just started blogging some of my explorations of Second Life again -and considering that I like to mix-and-match outfits from my favourite designers - it takes me hours to complete a post listing all the links and sources for all the creators.

I started with the designers' full names, store names and links, but today I just listed store names with links, which I think I'll do from now on. Even then it took most of the afternoon.

( Well, I was flying around Second Life taking pictures at the same time, which took a bit of time. It was fun though! )

[foneco zuzu (@ZZBottomHL)]

Plea to All Sl users, watch this 1:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-8141?focusedCommentId=341124#comment-341124

[Cajsa Lilliehook]

I always provide complete store names and provide a link to a directory of stores rather than story links. Stores move. Blog posts stay forever and the links become out of date. More than half my traffic is from people reading old posts. SLURLS in those posts would actually cause more harm than good, irritating people by sending them to the wrong place.

I do check to ensure the stores are in search and provide the creator's name if they are not, but slurls only result in angry im's from people who follow a 3 year old link and land in the ocean.

[Blog YourMystery]

Good day ! I simply wanted to tell that you really managed to create a cool resource. Will you be so kind and give an answer to my question. Have you ever taken place in any kind of competitions between bloggers?