I'm always looking for ways to automate my daily activities. One of those activities is how I share my blog content via social media channels.
I recently found a tool for my website that makes this a whole lot easier.
tweetily is a plug-in for Wordpress websites. It randomly picks a blog post you have written and, within the time parameters that you select, will tweet out the title and link to that article. You can even exclude certain categories and add hashtags that will appear in the tweet.
I now use it to handle most of the tweeting of stories/links on my website.
However, I came across a problem that I hadn't expected. While the headlines for my blogs were adequate for my website, they didn't really fit into the Twitter world -- they were too boring.
For example, "Saving for your child's college expenses" is an informative headline -- but it won't cause Twitter readers to click on the story. Once you start following several Twitter users, you'll notice that the volume of content can be overwhelming -- so your headlines really need to stand out and draw readers.
So I revised the title above, changing it to "You're saving incorrectly for your child's education. Find out why." Similarly, "Teachers -- saving for retirement" becomes "Teachers -- this retirement account could provide you thousands of extra dollars. What is it?"
When the titles get edgier, they gain more clicks.
Once I learned this, I went back to my blog and edited almost every title to fit into the Twitter world. It doesn't change my content, and the titles still seem relevant on the blog itself, but now they work in both worlds.
Dave Grant, a Financial Planning columnist, is founder of Finance for Teachers, a planning firm, and Fee Only Consulting, in Cary, Ill. He is also the founder of NAPFA Genesis, a networking group for young, fee-only planners.
