Spending time thinking about how to write a proper headline that will get people to actually open up
your article or your page is really important.
So here are some basic tips to remember whenever you write a headline make it unique make it specific
make it useful.
Create a sense of urgency and keep it as short as possible.
It's hard to have all of these in one heading but let's look at some examples so you know what we're
talking about.
I'm a huge personal finance nerd.
I love reading articles about personal finance.
I just can't get enough of it.
And I follow this blog called Rock Star finance it's an aggregate blog.
It picks the best articles every day and shares them on one page then it keeps sort of a list of the
latest and greatest articles.
When going through their list I see lots of articles that are not unique.
Lots of articles that seem the same as things I've read before.
Some aren't specific So this is kind of exempt.
An example of what not to do.
For example this title right here if you can afford a vacation you can't afford to invest.
It's obvious and I'm not really going to get anything more out of reading this article it doesn't add
anything it doesn't build any curiosity this one right here is short sweet do you need that.
It builds curiosity.
It's not specific and it's not really helpful or beneficial.
I don't really know what it's about.
So it's not using all the tips but I'm intrigued.
Should you pay off your mortgage early.
This is a question that's popular among personal finance aficionados.
It does build a lot of curiosity but it's not that unique.
This has been rehashed over and over.
So let's look at a few that I thought did really well.
Here's an article that uses a headline that is very unique more than books nine unusual things you can
borrow from the Liab public libraries.
First using lists is a popular technique.
It's still popular.
People have been using so the tip nine tips seven things kind of list articles for a while people still
are clicking on these types of articles a lot and this is something that is unique.
It's not something that I've thought about before is not something that I've seen online before and
after being online for many years there's not that many things that are unique anymore.
So having this sort of unique this in the headline helps.
Let's look at another example about being specific.
How much would you have if you saved one dollar a day for your entire life.
That headline is builds my curiosity and it's very specific and it's unique so it's hitting a lot of
those tips that I mention and keep in mind these tips are great for writing articles and blogs but also
for headlines for your copy even if you're sending out emails.
They all kind of work the same.
Here's a headline that is just completely useful.
How to get started with live streaming video production.
This is from Pat Flynn smart passive income.
He spoke with Caleb logic's on who I've actually partnered with and it is actually a headline for a
video blog article but it's just completely useful.
Anyone that's wanting to get started with live streaming video.
This is an article that calls out to them.
Next let's look at an article that builds a sense of urgency for best ways to invest in your 20s.
So this isn't your typical headline that's for things that you need to know right now or you're going
to lose out.
It's more subtle than that.
But this article is geared to people in 20s and it does build that sense of urgency for someone in their
20s who wants to invest.
Investing in itself is kind of urgent.
If you're not investing now then you're wasting time.
So that's why this works really well for this title but it's pretty simple.
For best ways to invest in your 20s it builds that sense of urgency for at least for people interested
in personal finance and that's who their target audiences so it works.
Lastly let's look at Reddit to sort of explore this idea of shorter titles being better read.
Is the self-claimed home page over the Internet.
It basically is a feed of all of the popular posts from today articles videos photos anything that's
sort of timely and relevant.
So if I'm on this page my eyes are automatically drawn to the shorter titles.
Cannonball don't leave me scrawled on set and only Landshark Ivanka Trump quoting Einstein.
These longer ones my eyes just glaze over them.
Not that there are bad headlines but when you're looking online when you're searching on Google when
you're on any sort of search engine people's eyes will be drawn to these shorter headlines.
So again it's kind of this hard balance between all of these tips that I'm talking about.
But when you're searching online just pay attention to the length of the headlines that you actually
click on or at least initially are drawn to.
I'll bet that most of them are shorter than these really long ones so keep all these tips in mind as
you write your copy and articles.