5 Top Tips For Crafting Killer Headlines
This is a subject that I’ve found myself writing quite a lot about recently – and I’m not actually surprised. Blogs are everywhere. I try and write persuasively as part of my job (as a blogger, as it happens) to convince business owners far and wide that they need a blog for their business, and maybe they’re listening – maybe they’re even READING – but, one thing’s for sure: the amount of business blogs out there is increasing dramatically on a daily basis.
This is a good thing. In case you’ve had your head under a rock for the past 5 years, then I have no doubt that you will probably have a blog on your business’s website already. In today’s world of social media marketing, having a blog simply isn’t an option anymore – it’s mandatory. The latest figures from WordPress indicate just how many WordPress blogs there currently are floating around the web waves, and how many people are reading them:
As you can see, the figures just go up and up and up. With over 409 million people viewing more than 19.6 billion pages each month on WordPress alone, then I really need argue no longer that a blog is now an essential part of a website, and a crucial way to market your business and your expertise to an increasingly sophisticated online world.
Getting People To Read Your Blog
Ok, so you need a blog. Indeed, you’ve probably already got one. So the next question has to be – how do I get people to read my blog?
This is the crux of the matter – and that’s no understatement. I’ve already covered in a previous blog how important images are for getting your posts noticed in social media streams, and have given you 5 fantastic sources for free stock images to boot, because I’m nice like that. Indeed, it is arguable that images are in fact the most important aspect of getting your blog read, but coming in a very close second is your headline. And with the combination of the two, then you can be sure you’ll soon see a spike in your traffic. Way back in last place is the blog itself – so just be wary of that.
I want to share with you a screenshot from an infographic from Quicksprout, which shows some quite revealing statistics (and a rather controversial suggestion) about headline writing:
Those first two figures I think are brilliant. Only 20% of the people who see a link to your blog post will actually bother to read it. However, 80% of people who are scrolling through their news feeds will stop and read a headline.
Ok, so what does this mean?
For me, I actually think that the figures reveal more about the average social media user than they do about blogs and bloggers, in all fairness. Most people who spend time on social networks – including your followers – are doing so for social purposes (the clue’s in the title). This means that it will be very hard to get them to click on one of your brilliant thought-provoking blogs that have been designed to capture the imaginations of people interested in your industry – they’re just there for the gossip and little else.
However, 80% of these people will nonetheless be reading your headlines, even if they’re not interested in the blog itself. This means that they are still absorbing your content – albeit just the briefest part of it. Your message, therefore, needs to be made extremely clear in your headlines, so that you are implanting your existence into the collective subconscious of probably thousands of social media users – some of whom, of course, will no doubt be ripe for converting at some point.
The last point on the screenshot that says that writers should spend half the entire time it takes to write a blog on the title, I think, is a little over the top – and of course it’s probably meant to be to drive the point home.
Headlines are very important. They’re important for clicks, but they’re also important for passive browsers who won’t read your blogs, but will persistently see your logo associated with an image and a headline.
5 Top Tips For Crafting Killer Headlines
#1. Use Numbers
List posts are one of the most popular types of blog that entice people to click. Why? Because they immediately communicate to the user the value of the post. Take this blog for instance – you know by the title that you are going to get 5 top tips on crafting killer headlines. It’s clear, it’s simple, you know what you’re going to get, and that the information will be genuinely useful to you as a blogger.
CoSchedule recently conducted some research that that took more than 1 million blog headlines into account. And here’s a snippet of what they found:
“One of the first things that I saw was that lists posts are huge and were the most likely type of post to be shared more than 1,000 or even 100 times. More interestingly, list posts only made up 5% of the total posts actually written, which means that we don’t create enough of these posts to begin with. An immediate takeaway here is to start creating more list posts.”
WRITE MORE LIST POSTS, PEOPLE!!
#2. Ask A Question
‘Are You Using These 5 Great Hacks To Write Clickable Headlines?’ could have been the title for this blog post (though would have been in violation of point 4, mind you).
Asking the user a direct question immediately forges a connection between reader and writer. It involves them in the blog post, topic, discussion and issue at hand. Indeed, it’s almost as if you’re creating a conversation, rather than just delivering an ‘essay’ of sorts to the reader.
By asking your readers a question, you will begin to make the whole thing personable and relatable, and that will do no end for your clicks and engagement.
#3. Make Those Adjectives Interesting, Fascinating, Incredible, Appealing, Charming, Beautiful, Strange, Absolute, Unique, Stimulating, Tempting, Titivating and Titillating!!
Got it? The reasoning is simple enough – interesting words create interest. And interest is the very thing that you are trying to pique in your readers with your headlines.
#4. Keep Your Headlines Short And Sweet, Not Long, Over The Top, Too Flowery, ‘Clever’ Or Pompous, As People Won’t bother Reading Them – And That Goes For Your Subheadings, Too!!
Get the point? They say that a perfect length for a headline is 6 words (and one of ‘they’ happens to be the ETO – so be warned (and be afraid), people!). However, if it runs to 8 words, then don’t panic. If it’s only 5, then that’s ok, too. But the important thing is to keep your headlines short and sweet.
Here’s another screenshot from the Quicksprout infographic:
#5. Use The CoSchedule Headline Analyser
I’ve mentioned this very tool in a recent blog for this site – and I have to say that since I’ve started using it I’ve noticed an increase in engagement on my blogs. The thing that I particularly like about the CoSchedule tool as opposed to other headline analysers is that it’s specifically designed for blogs. Here’s how this headline fared:
As you can see I had a few goes getting my score above 65 – the minimum degree I perceive to be permissible. Don’t tell the ETO, but I had to bump it up to 7 words to reach the target – and it was the insertion of the ‘power word’ ‘top’ that tipped it to tip-top topness. Yeah – a tip-top top tip indeed!
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