This post about how to get poker traffic from social networking sites is the 4th article in a series of articles about social media optimization and poker. The first 3 articles are:
- Social Media Optimization for Poker Websites
- Poker Blog and Poker Microblog Optimization
- Poker Forum and Message Board Optimization
Examples of social networking sites include Myspace and Facebook. Twitter is a microblogging platform, but it incorporates a social networking aspect into its usage. Optimizing your website to receive traffic from these sources is similar to optimizing your site to receive traffic from any other type of social media site:
- Create interesting content with good headlines
- Participate in the community
- Post links to your content
Creating Interesting Content with Good Headlines
Interesting poker content always has value, but it has special value in terms of getting poker traffic from social networking sites like Facebook. FB has over 180 million registered users, and some websites receive more traffic from Facebook than Google. It would be a shame to ignore the traffic potential of such a site.
But before you can get traffic to your website via a social networking site like Facebook, you need a reason for people to visit your website. Since most of my readers publish poker content, that means they need interesting poker content with good headlines. I’m not the world’s expert on good headlines, but I have read some great articles on the subject from Copyblogger. You can adjust and re-use his suggestions for headlines for poker content easily. Here are some examples using the magnetic headlines from his site:
- Why You Should Always Raise with Aces Preflop (BTW, I’m not saying this is good poker strategy advice; it’s just a headline that will get clicks.)
- The Cheater’s Guide to Winning at Texas Holdem
- Do Pot Odds Really Matter?
- How to Play a Killer Game of Texas Holdem and Win Money
- 7 Reasons Why Tight Aggressive Poker Always Wins
- Why Some People Always Win at Texas Holdem
- 10 Sure-Fire Texas Holdem Strategies that Always Win
- 9 Proven Texas Holdem Tactics That Win Money Like Crazy
- 7 More Sure-Fire Texas Holdem Strategies that Always Win
- Warning: Use These 5 Omaha Poker Strategies at Your Own Risk
- The Art of Winning at Stud Poker
Those are just some “magnetic headlines” off the top of my head, but they sure beat the hell out of boring titles like “Tight Aggressive Poker”. These kinds of headlines generate clickthroughs, and that’s what you’re after when you’re optimizing for social networking sites.
You’re also hoping that your content is interesting enough that the visitors from your social networking site of choice will repost your link.
Participate in the Community
If you post a link on Facebook, but you don’t have any friends to see it in your updates feed, will you get any traffic? (I’ll let you work out the answer to that one on your own.)
If you make lots of friends on Facebook, then lots of eyeballs will see your magnetic poker headlines, and you’ll get traffic. And if you repost other people’s links to their content, then they’ll be more likely to repost your links. At that point, you’re not just getting eyeballs from your own network, but you’re also getting eyeballs from your friends’ networks too.
It’s called social media and social networking because you have to be social in order for it to work to your advantage. You have to participate in ways other than promoting your content. Wish people a happy birthday. Play an occasional game of Yoville or Mafia Wars. Comment on other people’s updates in their feeds.
Drop Links to Your Content
This part seems obvious, but the trick is to not overdo it. At least 80% of what you do when you’re participating at a social networking site like Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter should be unrelated to promoting your content. If you’re just there to advertise, people will know it, and you’ll lose out on tremendous amounts of goodwill. And goodwill will generate a lot more traffic in the long run than shameless, aggressive promotion.
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Headline psychology is important in Web writing and Web marketing but something many of those articles neglect to mention is that a headline format can become saturated in a topic space. When everyone is writing “Top 5 Tips For Winning At Poker” articles, it’s time to stop writing “Top 5 …” articles and come up with headlines that stand out from the crowd.
You still need to use good hooks — a headline is an elevator pitch for the Web and it has to intrigue readers. But when everyone is using the same kind of headlines, the power of the psychology behind the format is spread too thin.
Thanks for the insights, Michael – I agree. Most people in the poker industry don’t write much in the way of headlines at all though, so I think the examples I gave would stand out pretty well. I know that your “20 Hardcore SEO Tips” was a pretty successful post, and I think the headline and approach was at least partially responsible for that post’s success. Maybe someone will write “20 Hardcore Texas Holdem Tips” and it’ll take off.
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