Subtitles | Website In A Weekend

(Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes)

What do the bloggers Naomi Dunford, Johnny B. Truant, Kelly Diels and Hugh MacLeod all have in common?

Think about that for a bit.

While you’re thinking…

Imagine raising your family off the grid. Miles past the end of the road. No electricity, save what you can generate for yourself.

No neighbors.

Heh.

The mind boggles.

You can do anything you want, whenever you want. Ride your horse over the mountain. Play Led Zeppelin until you’re deaf in both ears. Shoot guns! Any caliber! Anytime! Frolic naked in the glorious rays of the sun! (Ok maybe not, but still.)

But when the weather goes bad… or the snowmobile breaks… what then?

Sounds like a story in the making.

I’d better back up a little bit. A few weeks ago I was emailing back and forth with Marshall, who (by the way) lives off the grid. We were discussing his website, in particular how much potential he has for hitting it really big. His story has got to be fascinating. I’m sure of it. The key is in the storytelling.

So I promised Marshall I’d start writing about storytelling:

I don’t know how to help you directly with story telling, but there’s bound to be a lot of information online. In fact, I’ll look up story telling myself right after I send this [email] off to you.

Thus, a blog post is born.

Storytelling seems like hard work

Some people seem to be natural born storytellers. I am not one of these people. I have to work at it. Hard.

Working hard means I have to practice telling lots of stories, even when the stories turn out crappy.

Like the following.

A few weeks ago I posted a request for an accountability partner to give me motivation to finish 12 short screencasts on Practical WordPress Tips, or…

I pay $100.

Deacon took me up on it, and sweetened the deal with an incentive: finish 2 days early, dinner is his treat wherever I want to eat.

How hard could it be, right? These screencasts are short, 2 – 5 minutes long.

But the screencasts have to be done in one take.

After procrastinating 10 days, I spent Tuesday – all day – recording the screencasts. All day to produce 12 stupid little videos. Easy peasy.

Yeah, right.

Everything seemed to start just fine. By mid-morning I had five of the 12 complete. By late afternoon, things weren’t looking quite so good. Think of any mistake possible, I made it:

Leaving the microphone off. Check.
Forgetting to plugin the microphone in. Check.
Forgetting to turn the power on the mixer. Check.
Coughing, check. Scraping chair, check.
Forgetting what I wanted to say, check.
Getting frustrated: check check check!

Even worse, I recorded in the wrong video format and had to spend a bunch of time finding software to convert the videos from swf to mp4.

And worst of all, the end result, the very best I know how to do… is crappy. Bummer.

But…

crappy is better than nothing.

Since I finished the videos early Deacon bought me dinner at Macaroni Grill. And ripped up my $100 check:

That felt pretty good.

Even better, a few days later I had to record a 2 minute screencast several times to get it right. I slurred my words, forgot what I want to say, had the microphone off, you name it, it was just like that Tuesday from hell. But nothing I hadn’t already dealt with.

This screencast turned out better than the first 12. I whipped it out really fast in spite of the mistakes. Progress in inches is still progress.

You can learn storytelling

As I promised Marshall, I did look up storytelling. Even bought a book: “How to Tell a Story – The secret of writing captivating tales.”

Turns out it’s not that hard. Stories have a standard structure. Learning – and using – story structure will improve your storytelling. As you can see above, I’m teaching myself.

In previous articles, I’ve taught you about titles, and about subtitles and teasers. Next up, let’s ~~steal~~ borrow an absolutely killer technique from screenwriting and playwriting: the inciting incident.

The inciting incident allows your reader to emotionally connect with your motivation for writing, drawing them further into your writing and setting the scene for your story.

In short, the inciting incident messes with their heads and sucks them in.

From Richard Toscan,

Inciting Incidents can be the vaguest hints of concern. Or the most obvious sledgehammer. Either kind works. You just need to have one.

(What’s my inciting incident for this blog post? Does it work well, or could it be better? In your opinion, do I use a vague hint or a sledgehammer? What about for my screencast story, hint or sledgehammer?)

Write better stories now!

If you suck at storytelling and want to improve, you’re probably going to tell a lot of crappy stories too. Might as well get started. As my Great Aunt Vina Williams used to say “Time’s a wastin’.”

Here’s a Website In A Weekend challenge: write a simple story (300-500 words is fine) about something as mundane as screencasting, taking special care with the title, the teaser and your inciting incident. Make it easy: use your next blog post; you’re writing it anyway.

After you publish your story, send me an email or leave a comment (you’re probably in my RSS feed anyway), and I’ll link your story right here anchoring with your title. I’ll support the link with your teaser or inciting incident, whichever seems best.

Here’s our #3 storytellers

Justin Matthews gets the first slot with Cloris Leachman and Christmas Lights in the Nose…, a shaggy dog story nicely tied up at the end. Here’s the inciting incident:

I had a dream last night. Cloris Leachman was the sexy starlet in an unfolding drama that had someone very generic as the leading man. I was off to the side. Good thing too, I could turn my back on the love scene that was just starting.
Anne On Line gives us “I Always Admired Mr. Franklin, But Now I Truly Respect Him.” Check this out:

Teddy had his stick.

Martin had a dream.

And Ben, well, Ben had gas.

Why is it I am only now learning about this?

Good question Anne. I thought everyone knew this. *snicker*
Marshall from Real Off Grid Living (mentioned above) weighs in with another driveway story: Backwards Skiing with 1500 Pounds and Wheels. At the end of 3.8 miles of dirt road, Marshall is inventing a whole new genre, driveway stories. Here’s how he kicks off his latest:

“Ok. Jackie, kids, I think its time to wait outside the rig, I don’t think it or the snow is too stable!”, I heard myself saying New Year’s afternoon. I keep swearing to myself that this won’t happen again. Another year and another incident on the “washboard” with snow. At least this year it wasn’t dark, but unfortunately I wasn’t alone, so my family got to witness the sometimes frightening madness.

You gotta check out the picture that goes with this, classic stuff. Takes me back to northern Indiana, ca. 1978. *shudder*

By the way, not that it matters (*cough*), but Website In A Weekend just picked up Page Rank 3. Proceed accordingly.

Once you learn to tell the stories you already have, you will acquire a very large audience. I’m sure of it.

If you forgot, Johnny, Naomi, Kelly and Hugh are excellent story tellers. Each of them transform the mundane into magnificence. If you aren’t reading them, you should. I’m learning loads from reading their writing.

(Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes)

You’re losing readers… readers you don’t even know about… when you don’t know how to use subtitles effectively.

Crafting a killer subtitle supports your title, and helps draw readers from the title into your text.

Grab a cuppa, pull up a chair, and we’ll spend a few minutes discussing what subtitles are, where you’re going to use them, and how to create them. And how you can use this knowledge to make readers feel compelled to click through.

“What is a subtitle, anyway?”

That’s an excellent question, and I’m going to answer that question right off the top of my head. But first, you write down on a piece of paper what you think a subtitle is.

Go on, do it, write down your definition of a subtitle. I’ll wait.

Here’s my definition: A subtitle is a sentence or two of text immediately following the title, or in some cases, immediately following the byline.

Do our definitions match?

Now let’s what the Free Online Dictionary has to say: 1. A secondary, usually explanatory title, as of a literary work.

Ok, I’m in the ballpark. Let’s combine both.

Subtitle: A secondary, usually explanatory title, immediately following the title, or in some cases, immediately following the byline.

“Why are subtitles important?”

The subtitle is important because it’s the second thing a reader sees, right after your headline or title. Write a benefit-driven, attention-grabbing title, supported by a Reason Why subtitle, readers feel almost compelled to click through and read.

By the way, today is Double 10 Day. 10/10. 十十 (雙十節). Next year, I’ll be in Chinatown for 10/10/10. Would that be 十十十? I don’t know, but it ought to be quite a party!

Subtitles: the second most critical element

If titles are the most critical element of your articles, then surely, subtitles are the next most critical elements. After all, the subtitle is the first thing a reader reads… after reading the title. While it’s worth some time reflecting on subtitles in general, there’s two concrete reasons you need to master subtitles right now:

Subtitles can show up in RSS feeds. If you don’t catch ‘em with your killer title, the subtitle gives you another chance to reel them in.
Subtitles may be used by default in search engine results, by aggregators, or by other machine-driven, automatic content scrapers. Crafting a killer subtitle can only help.

As usual, there’s no need to take my word for it. I’ll have screenshots demonstrating exactly how subtitles appear in an RSS reader and in Google search results.

Arr Ess Ess – the feed you need

I’m going to assume every reader is familiar with Really Simple Syndication (RSS). If not, there’s a bazillion web pages on the subject, read a half dozen, you’ll know as much as I know. But really, you don’t need to know much more than

WordPress creates RSS – automatically – from your blog posts.

An RSS reader (that’s you) subscribes to the RSS feed, then displays the items – blog posts – in the feed using an RSS reader application.

I use Google Reader myself, whence this example is drawn. You can Google “Google Reader” for specific information on… Google Reader.

Fire up your favorite RSS reader now, and take a look at the feeds. Here’s what mine looks like (go ahead and click on the image to see it in full size, it’s important):

Titles and subtitles displayed in Google Reader

See all that text to the left? In the orange box? Labeled “Subtitle?” That’s the good stuff. You want those words to support your title, sucking your reader onto your blog and into your article.

Now, I make no claim that any of the subtitles shown in this screenshot of Website In A Weekend’s RSS feed are any good. But I will guarantee that my subtitles are going to get a lot better! And fast.

While we’re talking about subtitles…

Creating awesome, compelling titles is a first step, and I don’t know any better place to start than reading a definitive reference on the subject.

The serious student of the title will go further and get a copy of (WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! THE FTC REQUIRES ME TO DISCLOSE MY AFFILIATION WITH AMAZON.COM! I MIGHT MAKE MONEY IF YOU PURCHASE THE FOLLOWING BOOK!) First Hundred Million by E Haldeman-Julius. This book was first published in 1929 and contains 10 years of publishing experience on the Little Blue Books. Little Blue Books were 3×5 inch volumes, sold only by mail, and only in lots of 20 at 5 cents each. Customers ordered by placing check marks next to titles on large, broadsheet inserts or pages in their local newspapers. The only difference to the customer… was the book title.

Now let’s take a look at Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and see what our subtitles look like to J. Random Googler who is looking for your stuff.

What’s a SERP and is it contagious?

A SERP is a Search Engine Results Page.

You want your blog posts to appear on the first SERP for every search engine, but most especially Google.

Along with your blog post title, Google will display some (hopefully) descriptive text about the search result. This is where you need to have either a great SEO description, or a killer subtitle.

Check out this screenshot showing a lame description from one of my pages where I didn’t fill in the SEO description at all. Lacking the metadata, Google pulled the first couple of lines from the article:

No SEO description results in first lines of article shown in SERPs

This article did make the top half of page 1 of Google for the search term “Unleash WordPress,” so I got the SEO part of the equation correct. With a better subtitle, I believe I would get more traffic.

Recommendations for creating subtitles

Here’s two:

Create a 160 character teaser in your SEO Description field. From what I understand, the character limit isn’t hard-wired in all applications to 160 characters, but it’s a common length and the discipline for length constraint is good to develop.
For the actual subtitle, you could use the SEO Description, or you could write a different teaser [more about teasers]. Personally, I like to write a different teaser for the subtitle, and not feel overly constrained by 160 characters. However, note that RSS readers may truncate at less (possibly much less) than 160 characters. Put the good stuff up at the beginning!

For both suggestions, expand on your title, add benefits, reasons why, create surprises, all the usual tools and techniques for titles apply but you have more room to work with.

Do you have a 3rd recommendation? I’d love to hear it, leave a comment!

In fact, if you can add #3 to my list, I’ll personally help you create absolutely killer, rock-solid, eyeball-popping, seductive, compelling subtitles for 3 blog posts of your choosing. I’ll credit you for the suggestion, and dofollow link anywhere you want (offer expires October 31, 2009).

Your Next Killer Technique for Telling Compelling Stories (It’s easier than you think)

Storytelling seems like hard work

You can learn storytelling

Write better stories now!

Suck readers in from RSS and SERPs — Dig Deeper Into Subtitles

“What is a subtitle, anyway?”

“Why are subtitles important?”