How to Find a Tagline for Your Blog or Business Website
OK, you have a website. You have products or services you offer and/or actual content you publish as well. You have a
- brand name
- logo
- call to action
in the best case (something like “subscribe now”). What’s missing? A tagline is missing. That’s
a concise sentence describing your website or blog.
Ideally a tagline aligns with your actual value proposition. What the hell is a value proposition? Good question.
Taglines made simple
Most SaaS startups – businesses offering software as a service – state something like this: “x made simple” where x is the business they are in. “blogging made simple”.
It’s not a good tagline or value proposition because it’s not unique and simlicity is not a vluae for most people by itself.
Simplicity is wonderful! Don’t get me wrong. You can’t sell things just because they are simple. The value is elsewhere. Simple is often
- aesthetic
- easy to use
- fast
to name just a few benefits of simplicity. You have to name them though.
My tagline here after several years of wondering and even asking my audience in the original version of this post is: Helping people with blogs, social media and search.
Consider adding a tagline for usability reasons. It also helps to tell people what you are about before they leave your site as random and irrelevant.
A tagline is meant to explain the purpose of a blog or site in a few words or a short sentence.
Finding a tagline is even way harder than the already tedious process of crafting headlines for the fickle attention economy.
Can crowdsourcing be the solution?
A few years ago I collected a list of ideas and let my audience vote for them. They were also “allowed” to add their own. Here they are:
- Self Empowerment Online
- The convergence of search, social media and business blogging
- The future of SEO
- SEO is dead, long live SEO 2.0
- SEO by humans for humans
- Findability, usability and profitability
- Search & Social Media survival guide
- Cleaning the Intertubes since 2004.
My readers had to choose three of their favorites and add them in the comments below. Something like: 1, 4, 7 was enough.
I asked them explain their choice as well of course! The best additional ideas would be added to the post and they would get a link back to your site.
The actual headline and the last sentence below the post was: “Help me finding a tagline for SEO 2.0!”. Yes, it was a call to action indeed.
How to find a tagline by yourself
This way of finding a tagline did work to some extent but I wasn’t satisfied for long. You can’t crowdsource tagline writing. That can lead to the lowest common denominator.
You have to decide yourself. Feedback is great but not sufficient. You have to contemplate your business, what you offer and your values.
It has to be somewhat unique and ideally intriguing. My tagline is ambiguous for example. In the best case it is also very specific. Mine is not specific enough.
“Helping startups with business blogs, social media management and search engine optimization” would be more specific but sounds less streamlined.
A tagline is not a trivial matter. You have to brainstorm many ideas and abandon or improve them in the process. Take your time. I too years. I still think about it.
Tad, you know what I’ve loved about SEO 2.0? You’ve always been ahead of the curve. While everyone else was still trying to push SEO 1.0 – you were talking about social, engagement, looking after reputations online without being spammy…
It’s still too early for me to come up with a brilliant clever tagline (haven’t had enough coffee)but you’ve GOT to include that somehow. Martyn came up with a simple one. SEO 2.0: Engagement. It’s not bad. It’s what you do–be it on Twitter, blogs or [ugh] Facebook. ;)
My favorite is 7, its a little bit funny … My other choices are 6 and 2, but they aren’t as good as no.7.
Hey Lid!
Glad you are still around. I’m not sure if I’m still ahead of the industry. “2.0” sounds sooo retro these days ;-)
Also I was terribly late on Facebook. Hoped to be able to skip it altogether.
The “engagement” idea is a grand one. I’d need to make it a bit more self explanatory to work as a headline though. Something like
Social Engagement Octopus! ;-)
Marc: Yeah, true, the other two are very matter of fact but 7 reflects my true funny (aka over the top) writing style of mine, hehe.
Number 7 is definately my favourite from the list above. Will think of some other ideas and let you know if i manage to spark a good one this monday morning :)
Thank you for the feedback Dave. Let me now in case you discover more ideas.
I agree with “Lid”, but I feel that the term engagement is to broad, my take on things would be more like “Search Engagement”, “Search Interaction” is another you could use as it revolves around the concept of action being taken from developer and content creator. As for the term “Search” well that is needed so as to narrow the field and not be so vague.
Any ways that’s just my take on things.
P.S.: Great blog excellent read, keep up the hard word!
How about….
SEO 2.0 : All your link-bait are belong to us!
SEO 2.0 : Evolve or perish
SEO 2.0 : It’s more than Metadata
Nico: Good point. Something self explanatory and with context is needed.
Carl: Amazing! These are great as headlines as well I guess.
I really love number 7! goooo 7 gooo hehe
SEO 2.0 – It’s 1.0 + 1.0 and a touch of Social.
OK, #7 has won. See above :-)
2, 6, 7
“Leveraging Social Media for Findability, Usability and Profitability” or if too long
then “Social Media for Findability, Usability and Profitability”.