Forum Moderators: open
What are the top three tricks you use to make your forum posts perform for you (i.e. deliver the desired result)? Here's mine:
1. Keep your posts as short and concise as possible.
2. Don't ramble on about how something pertains to yourself unless it is necessary. Instead relate it to your intended audience and get them involved and actively thinking about the subject.
3. Answer your own question. Instead of simply asking the question and hitting the submit button, imply the question and then put the answer in the mouth of the reader. This can spark very detailed responses by those who don't agree, they often feel compelled to explain themselves.
I'm sure we've all had problems and searched for the solution only for Google to serve up a thread from some forum:
Post#1:
Hey, i'm getting [EXACTLY THE SAME ERROR YOU'RE GETTING], what's wrong?
Post#2: (same author)
Don't worry, fixed it now!
1: Title trumps everything.
2: Title is the most important aspect of the post.
3: So goes the title - so goes the thread.
I have learned, that the "art of the title" is an extremely rare skill. Once mastered, it can change not only how your posted threads go, but how your personal site goes as well.
Titles:
Examples off the active list:
(not picking on the AdSense forum here, but it has the high rate of new webmasters)
The old is a statement that will evoke agreement that the new format is bad. However, the message is then posted as a question. So, lets switch the title to a question too. The thread and title are now in agreement.
(should be interesting to watch that thread. it has 10 messages when the title was switched. That is too late to really change a thread based on the title, but we'll see).
They forgot the keyword "stats" in the title, so no one knew what the thread was about and ignored it.
This one is a tough one, because people can't really figure out what the message is about at all. So, I will take a shot at it (I may be wrong), and change the title to the new one. Ultimately, the thread itself is suspect and probably not in need of changing the title, but deletion altogther. If we'd gotten to it earlier, we may have changed the thread entirely, but it's too late now.
Pretty obivous there that the title had nothing to do with the post content.
old: Is this OK?
new: Ok to have ads on pages that Google normally Does not show ads On?
[webmasterworld.com...]
A well worded title is often a lot more likely to receive a good response. Very often you can browse the active list and think "I know that one"
You can almost ask a question with a well writen title.
Mack.
Thanks for the tip!
Brett certainly is consistent. :)
