Blog Traffic

How To Use Funny Social Media Content To Drive Serious Traffic

Today is a special day, Guerilleros! We’ve got the new theme up and running! While it’s a little more modern, this is still the same revolution you know and love. But after the Crash, we figured we’d modernize a little while we were at it. So we hope you like it. Tell us if you don’t.

I also noticed that we now have 42 followers on Networked Blogs, and 42 just happens to be my favorite number. Our 42nd follower also happens to be the newest writer I’ve been working with, and I invited her to write a guest post. Dr. Anna Gralton is a talented writer from Australia, and has been very helpful to the Chefe and I with some blog posts lately.

One of the blogs Anna has been running is topcornholeboards.com. The company name is The Cornhole King, and Anna has written some brilliantly funny posts following the royalty theme. They are completely worth stopping by for. But let me stop going on, and here is Anna’s article!

Tips on Writing Humor in Social Media

Writing humor for social media can be akin to a minefield. Humor’s a great way to get the message across, especially in this day and age with social media. If you get it right, the benefits can be nothing short of a miracle: increasing brand awareness; buzz; attracting new clients and leads; promoting firm-client interaction; increasing followers, fans etc. In contrast, if you get it wrong, you’re likely to confuse the heck out of your readers or, worse still, insult them. They will lose interest and not come back.

Although social media marketing is ultimately about selling and is very serious, the fact of the matter is that much content is set in a light-hearted, entertaining backdrop. As such, if you can find a funny angle or if it just slaps you directly in the face, such as with our Cornhole client blog, then why not run with it? Let’s face it; no one wants to read dull, dreary blog posts about an obviously funny topic.

You might also think that writing a humorous piece is easy and can be done on the spot. Wrong! When writing for social media, as you know, there are many more considerations that go into it. This is where you have to sit down and consciously merge the two.

Considerations

  • Commonsense 101. Make sure the product and/or site is really set up for humor. Consider what the client wants and needs. What type of content do they already have on their site? Consider their brand identity and tap into it. This is where a thorough understanding of the business, their target audience and their objectives is required.
  • The Underlying Guts. Think about the guts of the article. What is the post really going to be about? This will be serious and you’ll need to connect humor to it, not vice versa. Only create this connection after the crux of the post has evolved. Unless you have a specific idea in mind, don’t start with humor first.
  • Idea Creation. Revolve humor around a subject matter that everyone gets. If a client is entering a nationwide market from a localized geographical area, the humor must be understood by everyone out there in cyberspace. Pick a genre that’s popular. You could even tap into a subject that’s already been done, such as a slapstick movie. One pointer, though, if you’re going to continue to make a series of posts, ensure the topic is large enough to run with.
  • Tread Carefully. When writing humor, there are a few basics you should be cautious off. Readers won’t get in-jokes and it will only come off stupid. Don’t say anything politically incorrect – remember it’s for your client, not you. Also, don’t go overboard. A nice subtle bit of humor before getting into the core of the piece is great. Too much and it will come across as ridiculous.
  • Feedback. Get a friend or family member with a normal, but lacking, sense of humor and find out on a scale of one to ten what they’d give it. This is the person you tell a joke to and they give that socially inappropriate smirk and walk away. If the scoring hits above five, there’s a good chance you’re onto a winner!
  • Frame of Mind. Don’t write the piece when you’ve just had a screaming argument with your next-door neighbor because his dog dodoed on your front footpath for the umpteenth time and you were lucky enough to step in it – again! Do it when you’re in a relaxed, happy frame of mind and thinking happy thoughts. If this happens to be limited in your universe, at least jot down the outline when you’re in a happy mood. You can fill in the contents later.

When writing humor for a social media client, try not to get too carried away. This can lead to “humor specialization” – that is, humor that only you find funny. Keep it light, simple and connected to the brand and customer base.

Social Media Guerilla brings tips and tricks for effective social media marketing, as well as social commentary to anyone who is interested or will at least listen. We are waging a war on traditional marketing techniques. We are the underground. We are the future. Enlist now.

For an example using humor to drive traffic check out the Cornhole Kingdom, the place for custom cornhole boards.  The Kingdom is a great site for humor, and it certainly spreads into the realm of social media.

Warning! Jeff Johnson’s WordPress SEO Plugin Needs A Quick Fix!

Quick fix for Jeff Johnson's Plugin will improve its results

Quick fix for Jeff Johnson's Plugin will improve its results

A couple of days ago I publicly revealed my secret weapon for social media guerilla when it comes to wordpress plugins – jeff johnson’s free traffic-getting plugin. This cool plugin for wordpress combines major plugins in one package that is easy to install (less than 10 minutes) and can REALLY boost your SEO.

But of course, amongst the 100+ core changes that the plugin makes within WordPress, I dont agree with one – a big one.

I’ve explained before the optimal permalink structure for wordpress – Jeff Johnson’s plugin goes straight to that permalink structure, but changes one major thing.

This is how the plugin structures your permalinks:

/%post_id%/%postname%/

The problem here is in the first part of the structure, which will use your post ID as part of the URL – post IDS carry very little – if any – relevancy to your post. It’s a random number that wordpress assigns each plugin, no matter what your topic is.

So why would you have unnecessary, irrelevant items on your url?

EXACTLY!

Guerilleros, here’s the one thing you should change after installing Jeff Johnson’s SEO plugin:

/%category%/%postname%/

This simple change will add you post’s category into each permalink url – which will now carry a major addition that can heavily influence your rankings. This is what your posts will look like:

http://socialmediaguerilla.com/blog-traffic/quick-permalink-structure-fix-improves-blog-traffic/

Much better than:

Integrating Social Media – Blog RSS to Facebook to Twitter Automatically

Yeah, I though so.

But dont let this quick little fix stop you from getting all the other benefits of Jeff’s plugin:

DOWNLOAD IT NOW – it’s still free!

Quick Permalink Structure Fix Improves Blog Traffic!

Ninja SEO trick!

You’re probably familiar with the wordpress permalink structure showing some sort of date on the url, right? Something like this:

Common permalink structure with the post date

If you know a little bit about SEO, you know that the first place search engines look for keywords is in the domain url. As we see in the example above, 2009/07/10 is not a keyword anybody but a horoscope writer would target.

So, how can you change that silly date insertion to a more interesting, SEO-friendly url?

Changing your Permalink Structure

A permalink is the address given to a blog post, which is an abbreviation for “permanent link”. They are permanent because unlike your main domain url, which changes as you write new posts, the url on your permalinks remain the same. Therefore their importance for SEO.

To make changes to your blog’s permalink structure, follow these instructions:

  1. Log into your admin area (blogdomain.con/wp-admin)
  2. Scroll down to Settings >> Permalinks

At that point, you’ll see some WordPress suggestions like these:

This is what WordPress suggests for permalink structure

You don’t want to use any of these. Instead, at the bottom, where you see “Custom Structure”, enter this code:

/%category%/%postname%/

Your configuration should look something like this:

This is how your permalink structure works best

What happens now?

WordPress will use the categories you determine for each post as part of the permalink url, which will include (hopefully) more relevant keywords to your url.

After you’ve finished, your permalink will look like this:

Here's the optimized permalink structure in action

The Difficult Part?

So far, all you had to do was enter a half-a-line code to your wordpress admin area. That was ridicuosly easy.

The part that actually requires some thinking is determining which Categories suit your blog best.

For that, I highly recommend an extensive keyword research.

Make sure your categories:

  • are relevant to your content,
  • have decent traffic volume,
  • are generic enough to hold more than one or two posts.

The key with categories is that they’re not TAGS, but more like umbrellas from where your tags will come out.

After a week of updating all of the permalinks, I experienced a better indexation for most of the keywords within my categories, and an overall blog traffic increase of 20-25%.

It’s definitely worth it.

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