If you want to get people reading your articles and emails, the first thing you need to do is come up with a good attention-grabbing headline. It should pop right out at them, make them think, and get them to click through to read the rest.
There is a bit of an art to this and perfecting it will supercharge your marketing efforts. Here are some tips…
The Boring Headline
Most headlines are boring. People simply don’t focus enough creative energy on their headlines and this is a huge problem. While a headline may seem trivial, it’s as important as the title to a movie or book. Without an interesting headline, no one is going to want to read the rest of the information.
While “How to” and “What to Avoid When” are popular types of headlines, they really do very little to stand out from the crowd. The worst type of headline is obscure and doesn’t tell the reader anything about what they’ll find within. One-word titles are also another common offender.
Pro Tip: Try googling “article title generator” and you’ll find a few useful tools for creating headlines and article titles that grab people’s attention.
The Art of the Interesting Headline
If you want your article or email to really grab someone’s attention, then it needs to be a little different. With enough practice, you can learn to create headlines that are so magnetically attractive people won’t be able to ignore them.
One of the most useful techniques is creating controversy. As humans, we have an inherent need to read about, understand, and sometimes participate in controversy. Think about any controversial news story. You’d be hard pressed to find someone that didn’t have an opinion on it. You can harness this power for your own marketing.
Scams, Lies, and Traffic
You can easily create a bit of controversy by titling your articles and emails correctly. The content found within can be rather straight forward because the headline will do most of the work. If, for example, you’re going to write an article which details 3 great suggestions for blog posts, don’t title it “Three Great Blog Ideas”.
Try something a little more exciting. “Content Marketing is a Scam” can be a great idea. The article itself will go on to explain how most people handle content marketing incorrectly but the title makes people want to click.
“The Myth of Blog Traffic” could also be a good example. The article would be exactly the same, simply detailing a few suggestions for blog posts, but the title is much more alluring.
Putting it to Use
It might take a bit of time for you to really get the hang of creating titles like these. Professional writers spend years developing the skills needed to get people to click trough and read an article.
Practice makes perfect, however, and when you begin incorporating this strategy into your content marketing, you’ll begin to see a change right away. Click here to get all of this done for you today!