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Spend 37% More Time Writing Your Headline
Patrick Altoft sometimes spends 20 minutes crafting his titles. Why?
The headline or title contains the most important words in your article or blog post.
It’s the first thing your readers will see. It determines whether or not they will continue reading. So, you can take 3 hours to write a useful 1000 word post, but if your headline is boring, well… you’re missing out on a lot of traffic.
You’ll get more clicks from the search engines because your title is attractive. In the same way, you’ll get more clicks from Blog Rush. Also, some RSS readers only show the title.
Attractive titles make your site stand out from the sea of sites with crappy headlines.
What You Can Do With The 37% More Time
Edit your title. Rewrite your headline. Try different variations of the title. You proofread your body text, right? Do the same for your headline.
Be Specific. 37% is more interesting than 50% :) Also, list posts are great because they force you to be specific.
Use successful headline templates. (I’ll aggregate some of the best headline templates this week, so stick around.)
Popularity: 6% [?]
One of the reasons titles are so important is that sometimes you need 3 different ones. One for your blog post, one for your Digg submission and one for Sphinn or some other niche social site.
This is very true. It can be hard coming up with an interesting title, but it is important to spend time on it, because it can become the hook that determines whether people read the article or not.
One of my favorite bloggers recently challenged his readers to write a tribute to Randy Pausch, a professor who is dying of pancreatic cancer. The post was to be titled “One Last Blog Post.” I wrote my post on my personal blog, and that is the one blog post that has received the most response to, more than any other post I’ve ever written on that blog. It’s captivating, interesting, mysterious, and definitely wants to make people find out what you mean.
So the point you make is very valid. The post title can make all the difference sometimes.
Excellent example. Thanks.
Dee: That’s interesting b/c Chris Garrett wrote something similar at Copyblogger and the issue came up about specificity. Personally, I find titles like the “37%” example really insulting, as if the blogger thinks I’m stupid enough to believe that I too can get the exact same percentage value. That might come from over-analyzing everything, but that’s the way it is for me.
I can’t recall who pointed out that what still works with specificity but without being insulting is something like “How I Did More With 37% More Time” or some such. Then the title is more believable and likely to draw me in, wondering if I can do the same. It’s not telling me I can, it’s suggesting I can. Big difference.
I think I like your title a little bit better because of the believability factor. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the link :)
As with all headline formulas, it is not so much the template but why it works that is important. So Raj, you can take the learning while dropping the actual boilerplate - make sense?
Great post Headlines are everything…
One of my early mentors in advertising had a bet with a fellow copy writer, Simon Walters.
The bet was: That my Guy, Brian, could write a newspaper headline so powerful that Simon would be forced to read an entire broadsheet page of 8pt type.
The wager was: that the loser had to pay for the add.
My guy Brian, wrote the following headline…
“SIMON WALTERS SHOCKING SEX SECRETS REVEALED”
This headline was followed by paragraph after paragraph of humorous stories about Simon’s purported social antics in 8pt times roman. A bold provocative subheading every few column inches kept Simon (the entire ad agency team, and I strongly suspect half the city) reading.
The page finished with the obligatory mail order coupon which read…
For photo’s and original negatives proving all of the above simply send $10.00 to etc…
Needless to say Simon payed the advertising bill, and probably the $10.00 extra for the negatives.
Brian’s point was…
All headlines should get as close as possible to addressing the target market by name or the problem they WANT to solve.
i.e. How DOCTORS can make more money, New treatment for SORE FEET, Free CHILDREN’S games.
Thanks for a cool copywriting story. I agree with your point. Good copywriting is all about solving your readers’ problems. You have to know your audience so well that you know their true problems and can empathize with them.
No matter how many times I come across, the only one I can remember is “warning”.
I agree with you that the title must be attention grabbing. If I see a title that does not literally speak to me, I won;t even bother to look at the article.
The Title is of an Article is the most important part. After all, thats the first thing someone will read. So therefor it must grab that reader instantly. Shock and Owe :D