Want to get your story or product description out there in the lifestream of others in more controlled and branded way? I have discussed,  in the past, the fact that referral traffic of social networking/media sites is rivaling that of Google and Yahoo search. It's because of this your headline needs to be able to play nice in these applications if you don't want the referrer to change your carefully crafted message. Just as you take the time to create key words for maximum search ability so should you take the time to ensure that your headline will fit in these often character limited sources of referral traffic.

More and more people are using javascript "Post this to blank social network " browser buttons and site side "tweet this" functionality to quickly get the story they are interested in promoting into the user's preferred social networking news feed or lifestream. The scripts are designed to grab the page or h1 story title automatically and use it as the base of the post or tweet. Many times when I post there is a bunch of unnecessary copy that needs to get weeded out in order to fit the space. I will use my personal blog as an example of what not to do "Jaypiddy's Blog  >> Blog Archive   >> Winners for the first annual Canada Day photo contest. http://ow.ly/hN0N" See how the headline now becomes a bread-crumb trail? This is unnecessary because there is a shortened URL that the users will click and it takes up valuable space in the post. This is a built in trait of Wordpress and I need to look at how to build a work-a-round. Now the user will be tempted, or forced to, edit the copy in order to make the post fit the stream. This means that there maybe the removal of your brand name, typo or personal spin put in the headlines place. Personal opinion granted can be great if the comment is flattering but if possible why not get the headline into the stream as you planned it. Another thing that looks odd when people post into lifestreams is when the post has capitalization throughout the entire headline. This make the headline feel unnatural or more obviously a branded message and will lose the sense that the headline originated with the original poster. Witting in a natural language with proper capitalization will always work better for posting into someone's lifestream. A headline should quickly discribe your story, product or severice in less than 125 characters so that it can fit into a Twitter stream or Facebook News Feed. The reason for 125 characters maximum is that in Twitter there needs to be room for the story's URL without the need for the headline to be truncated. This means the message flows into the stream as you intented it to.

The strategy may seem simple but with the lifestream and newsfeeds of real people being where your brand is being advertised so heavily, every step must be taken to reduce the accidental mucking of your hard earned and consistent brand message.