Do These Headlines Work For You?

Let’s take a break from the headline remixing, and look at some of the submissions that I thought worked “as is.” Often the key to great editing is knowing when to keep your hands off, despite the fact that we might have taken a different approach ourselves. Feel free to voice contrary opinions in the comments—I always love to hear suggestions on how to make any headline better.

Let’s start off with the strong headlines that I didn’t even try to rewrite. In fact, I suspect that in these five cases, Jim, John, Jim, Maki and that anonymous guy at Engtech fully knew their headlines rocked, and only wanted to hear us confirm it.

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by Brian Clark

My Contact Form Has Been
Broken For Months

Don’t you just love when things like this happen?

After having the nagging feeling that something was not right, I tested the form on my contact page last weekend, only to have my concerns confirmed. It didn’t work.

I replaced the old form with the new WP-Contact Form III from Kristin Wangen, which is an improvement on Doug Karr’s modification of the original WP-Contact by Ryan Duff (Duff’s site seems to have died late last year). Works like a charm now.

I’m a bit concerned about how much correspondence I’ve missed. I have no idea how long the form was inoperable, but I’m guessing at least two months. Given the amount of consulting requests, biz dev proposals, and reader email I received this week with a working form, something tells me a lot of people received zero response from me when trying to get in touch this year. That’s unacceptable, and I’m upset about it.

So, if you’ve tried to contact me over the last couple of months (and you’re still reading despite my lack of response), please accept my sincere apologies. This is one of those instances where the technology that is supposed to make our lives better instead creates new problems.

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by Brian Clark

Headline Remix Madness – Part Two

This is the second installment of the headline remix series. You submitted content, I’m rewriting select titles and telling you why.

If you missed Part One it’s here. Otherwise, let’s carry on, shall we?

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by Brian Clark

Headline Remix Madness – Part One

I received over 100 submissions for headline remixing, so in the spirit of March Madness, I’m going to try to rewrite as many as possible in a series of posts. Frankly, the quality of the submissions has been really good, so I will also try to point out those that work “as is” and why.

Let’s get started.

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by Brian Clark

Here’s Monday Reading Material While I’m in Austin

I’ve got to run down to Austin and meet some folks at SXSW (darn the luck), so here are some links you might have missed. I’ll be back before you know it to remix those headlines.

There’s a virtual blog seminar going on today, right now, over at Successful Blog. Check it out, and make sure you’re signed up to attend the SOBCon Blogging Conference in Chicago, starting May 11, 2007.
At the other end of the virtual spectrum, Andrew at SEO Black Hat is holding an online SEO poker tournament. All you need to play is to ante up a link.
Did you know that Yahoo says that copywriting is one of the top 5 professions for 2007?
Great post from Michel Fortin about how to target your perfect customer.
Dan Santow tells you to quit spacing out and to make sure you know what the word plethora really means (anyone else thinking of ¡Three Amigos! right now?).
Mike over at Simplenomics gives you sales lessons via Shakespeare, Leonardo DaVinci, and Yoda. No really… Yoda.
Raj discusses the danger of having too many web sites, and Rand clearly states the benefits of building one hugely authoritative web site.

OK, everyone play nicely while I’m gone and I’ll hopefully have something for you tomorrow. Unless there’s a good party tonight, that is (and there always is at SXSW).

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