Uncategorized Archives - Cathy Goodwin, Ph.D.

Finding exactly the right words to use is the key to getting people to open your e-mails, to click on and share your links.

One of the best ways to get people to open more of your communications over time is to keep testing and improving your headlines.

… This is one area where the numbers can make a huge difference for you. According to Perry Marshall, very small improvements early on in your funnel lead to BIG improvements where it matters – at the top of your funnel where people are buying high-end programs. It works like this…. if your conversion rate between your free optin and entry level report is 20% but you can raise it to 25% by improving the open rate on the first e-mail – that gives you 25 people eligible for the next level. If the conversion rate between your entry and mid level product is also 20% – that those extra 5 people turn into an extra sale for you.

Making small improvements is a matter of an often tedious testing and tracking process. But, hours of effort become worth it when you get that extra client in your high end coaching program.

Because it is text based and fast moving, Twitter is an ideal place to quickly test your headlines. You have access to a large sample and you don’t have to wait forever for feedback.

Here is how to test your headlines on Twitter in three easy steps.

1. Create two headlines that you think will work will for your article or blog post.

2. Tweet both of these headlines out about an hour apart. It helps to do them in the same part of the day. i.e. both in the morning or in the afternoon. Because 9am is more similar to 10am than noon is to 1pm.

3. Use your data to see which performed better. To do this step, you need a social analytics program. Some of the programs that work well for this are GroSocial (this is what we use at Decisive Minds) or HootSuite. You can also create a [link shortener] for each headline and track that way.

4. Take the headline that worked better, come up with a new version and keep testing.

As I always say, rinse and repeat. Consistency is the key here. The first few times you play with this, you might only see a very small difference. Keep working and keep improving and you’ll keep seeing larger differences. And remember, these improvements create a snowball effect. Even the smallest changes at the very beginning make a huge difference later.

So, my challenge to you is to test some headlines on Twitter and make some improvements.

Michele Scism is a leading authority on social media and online marketing and the Founder of both DecisiveMinds.com and The Global Social Media Managers Association. Her clients call her “The Results Lady” because as a business strategist she uses her signature “Take Action Get Profits” system to help entrepreneurs turn their passion into expert status and then profits. The key to any successful business is visibility and client attraction and Michele’s systems, strategies and business tips are focused on just that.