Making Full USE of Your Triond Article Title AND Description

MAKING FULL USE OF YOUR TRIOND ARTICLE TITLE AND DESCRIPTION

When Adding a brand new Triond feature, article, poem, etc, many writers seem to give little thought to maximizing the potential of the title line and description box on the submission page.

                                                THE TITLE

One-word titles like ‘Green’ or ‘Bob’ followed by a description that says ‘A poem’ or ‘my friend’ is not likely to hook many readers.

Most good titles give indication of the content of the feature – a film review ought to include film review and the title of the film included. If it is a film like Star Wars, emphasise which Star Wars film(s) are covered. A review of A New Hope may appeal to different readers than one for The Phantom Menace.  

If you don’t mention it is a film review it could be assumed that it is a review of a tie-in book, the merchandise, or a fan’s love of dressing up like Darth Vader

As soon as it is published your article will go into a list of the latest submissions and news feeds, and it will come up on your added friends lists as the next feature added by a friend / fan they have added.  My news feed lists seven articles written by my Triond friends at present, with an option for me to scroll to the next page to see more.

The titles are the invites for me to check out the features coming in. As I add more Triond friends, the feed list changes faster, as long as my friends are prolific writers.

Clearly, I cannot read every feature on my lists. I have to be selective, so the better titles are going to be the ones I am more likely to click on. A feature just called ‘Bob’ is going to be ignored in favour of one offering more.

                                    DESCRIPTION

After your title comes the description box, which many writers use badly. Having written a 500-1,000 words plus essay, a writer then seems reluctant to add a decent, well thought out and worded description of the feature given, expecting the text and title to speak for itself. Simply adding that it’s a poem, review, recipe, etc may not be enough – you are actually wanting to show why it is more interesting than a million other reviews, recipes and poems the readers could go to right there and then.

Another common mistake is for writers to simply add the opening lines of the piece itself as the description, so the poor reader ends up reading exactly the same text twice in a row.

The decryption should summarize, hook and intrigue the reader into enough curiosity to read on. As with the title, if it fails, the article will be abandoned quickly, its ads un-noticed, and the author’s potential earnings reduced. The reader who leaves disappointed won’t comment on your article, as they will not have stayed long enough to see the comments options.

Some search engines and pages like Digg or Reddit often use your Description text in promoting your article too – give their readers something to work with.

Arthur Chappell