Just when I think I have everything figured out, I find out how much I still have to learn.

Since I started Cliqpreneur, I’ve been reading and learning as much as possible about successful blogging. I thought I was at least competent at writing compelling headlines and valuable, unique content. I got to a point where I was comfortable with my blog, so I decided to submit some posts to social sites. I decided to limit my submissions to Digg and Sphinn.

The first post I submitted was Increase Your Google Quality Score in 5 Minutes. That post got a lot of traffic from both sources, and I was excited as you can imagine. I submitted another post which was mostly a marketing ploy. I felt a bit guilty about that one, so I decided to limit my submissions to my most valuable content (in my opinion).

I next submitted these posts to Digg and Sphinn:

1. A Better Way to Choose Your Domain Name
2. What Most Internet Business Products are NOT Telling You

I thought these two posts were fairly equal with respect to value, but the response was very different. Can you guess which one had the higher number of views? It was # 1. As a side note, neither of these posts matched the views from the first submission.

I am definitely not an expert at writing titles (or writing in general), however, I think I can pick out what makes the post headline for # 1 better than the post headline for # 2.

The benefit to the reader is more specific and clear in #1. In #1, the reader knows the topic of the post and what the benefit will be from reading the post. Post #2 was my attempt to create a “curiosity” headline, but there was not enough tension created to grab the reader. The topic (and benefit) was too vague and the “hook” was not compelling enough. In hindsight, I can imagine the reader thinking “Why do I care what they are not telling me?”

Here are the takeaways:

• Make sure the reader knows how the post will make their life better, or…
• Make sure the topic is compelling enough that the reader will want to click through to continue reading the post.
• Reviewing clicks from social site submissions is a great way to discover what is and what is not working.

For the most part, I am going to write headlines that explain the benefits of the post. I’ll experiment with the “curiosity” approach on a lesser basis to master that approach.

Stay tuned.

Image by kk+