The Secret To Creating Great Headlines For Your Online Content

Getting a headline right is probably one of the most important parts of creating online content either for your personal blog or business website. The headline will, more often than not, be the main thing that will help a prospective reader decide whether or not you have the information they want or need.

To encourage readers to click on your link, sometimes we need to simply “say what you see” – for those of you who remember Catch Phrase I’m talking about taking a leaf out of Roy Walker’s book.

Finding a good balance of the amount of time you spend on a headline is imperative.  It’s important to evaluate the type of content. Timeless content that can be shared over and over again should always take a little longer to shape.  Throwaway content which goes out of time or fashion quickly can be developed much quicker.

Headlines should:

• Be informative
• Be interesting
• Evoke curiosity
• Inspire the reader
• Be truthful (to what the content is)

If your blog or brand allows don’t be afraid to be:

• Controversial
• Challenging
• Off The Wall
• Over Excited

But be careful not to make the reader:

• Angry
• Sad
• Depressed
• Frustrated
• Feel lied to
• Confused
• Bored

Negative feelings can cause your potential reader to switch off before they’ve assessed whether they would be interested in your content.  Always remember that people make snap decisions.

Websites to inspire:

Some media institutions are developing great content headlines already and they are working.  But always remember that these institutions have big business behind them so don’t be disappointed if your content doesn’t deliver in the way theirs has.

Here are some to dip in and out of for ideas and inspiration:

• buzzfeed.com
• upworthy.com
• womenshealthmag.co.uk
• iflscience.com
• metro.co.uk

At Upworthy it’s been reported that writers will knock out 25 headlines for the same article in an attempt to find the perfect one. Writing this many headlines forces the writer to think outside the box and push the boundaries of what they think would be an “acceptable” headlines. I’m not advocating anyone should do this unless the piece of content is going to be used in a native advertising campaign or will be sponsored.

** TOP TIP ** Don’t be afraid to google the actual story you want to create and take inspiration from how other people have done it.

Words that work:

Having spent some time going through several websites which use clever and interesting headlines I found these to be some of good buzz words to use in headlines (if you have any more to add let us know):

Phrases that work:

I did the same research looking for phrases that seemed to be repeated and used widely:

A headline formula that can help:

While doing some training with an American digital marketing company Digital Marketer they provided us with these few headline formulas – you would be surprised how well they work for most things. One of their free resources The Ultimate Social Media Swipe File is definitely worth downloading. You should also check out their blog post Learn to Write Headlines That Get More Clicks as it’s a fantastic resource.

X Ways to [DESIRED END RESULT] in [TIME PERIOD]

– Example: 19 Ways To Cook a Nutritious Dinner in 15 Minutes or Less

X [TOPIC] Ideas That Will [DESIRED END RESULT]

– Example: 22 DIY Projects That Will Increase the Value Of Your Home

X Ways to [DESIRED END RESULT] Without [UNDESIRED RESULT or CONSTRAINT]

– Example: 5 Ways to Purify Water Without Having To Build a Fire

X [THINGS] That Will [DESIRED END RESULT]

– Example: 11 Skin Care Products That Will Remove Wrinkles

X Ways to Rid Yourself of [UNDESIRED RESULT]

– Example: 19 Ways to Rid Yourself of Credit Crushing Debt 

Check out lots more top tips at digitalmarketer.com/blog one of my favourite blogs in the content marketing space.

Headline length:

Whilst websites like Upworthy promote the use of longer headlines at Excalibur Press and The Content Club we try to aim to make them Twitter friendly.

However, this is not a hard and fast rule.  Whatever works for the story is our true preference, there’s no point trying to shoe-horn a big giant square into a teeny tiny circle.

So our optimum to save lots of hassle is around 100 characters (to allow for links & hashtags to be added) – this article is 62 characters – and I would say probably 40 characters being the shortest

So, what does 100 characters look like? It’s probably around this length or, in fact, a little more

&

Here’s what 40 characters will get you!!

When writing headlines try to:

1. Make a promise not a statement

What will the reader GAIN by reading this?  Maybe they will simply be entertained or maybe they will be enlightened, educated, trained etc…

2. How long will it take to read?

When you read your headline does it give the reader an indication as to how long it will require their attention?  For example if you’ve said it’s a list of 100 things, they will know it will take longer to read. But if you say things like “quick” and “simple” list they will know they can skim it quickly.

3. Fascination

This is probably the most important element.  People want to find out new things, our thirst for discovery has never been greater – you can tap into this with the right headline.