Crafting the headline for an article you publish is probably more important than writing the actual article. I say probably, but many professional copywriters who make lotsa money doing this will tell you it is THE most important task.
If your headline is ho-hum nobody will read what you have to say. If your headline is engaging and compelling, people will get drawn into reading your article like Ulysses to the Sirens. They won’t be able to resist it.
Of course, you still need good content in the body of the article. Otherwise readers will be mad they spent the time reading only to come up empty.
Brian Clark of Copyblogger gives some great tips on this. Recently he wrote this in a post called 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work. Here’s an excerpt:
"Any headline that lists a number of reasons, secrets, types, or ways will work because, once again, it makes a very specific promise of what’s in store for the reader. A nice quantifiable return on attention invested goes a long way toward prompting action, and as long as you deliver with quality content, you’ll have a satisfied reader."
"Plus, these type of posts and articles are perfect for building your authority and demonstrating a mastery of your area of expertise. If you’re business blogging, that’s key."
He then goes on to list 7 classic “list” headlines that you can remix on your blog when you’re looking to boost readership:
In a minute, I will show you how you can use these classic headlines for your own articles.
1. Do You Recognize the 7 Early Warning Signs of High Blood Pressure?
2. 10 Ways to Beat the High Cost of Living
3. Five Familiar Skin Troubles
4. Six Types of Investor — Which Group Are You In?
5. How to Give Your Children Extra Iron — These 3 Delicious Ways
6. Free Book Tells You 12 Secrets of Better Lawn Care
7. 76 Reasons Why It Would Have Paid You to Answer Our Ad a Few Months Ago
Here are a few ways you can re-write these classic headlines for your own articles or web pages:
1. Do You Recognize the 7 Early Warning Signs of Low Blog Traffic? (or low or bad anything)…
In headline #2 you can substitute high cost of living with any other challenge your readers want to beat. In #3, you can talk about other familiar troubles unique to your audience.
You see how this works? These headlines are called classic, because in the world of direct marketing, they have proven themselves to be effective in getting people to read and buy.
You don’t have to come up with your own brilliant headlines. Everything good has already been written and tried out by the direct markets over their 70+ years of selling things through content.
My favorite reference books for headlines are David Garfinkle’s Advertising Headlines that Make You Rich, and Carl Galletti’s 2002 Greatest Headlines Ever Written.
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