← Insights
If you're reading this sentence, my headline did its job. It appealed to your self-interest and drew you, a current or potential customer, into this post.
For everyone who isn't reading this, the headline failed, and this post joins the millions of online articles that go unnoticed.
Plenty of those articles hold good advice. Without a compelling headline, they never had a chance.
Don't let your articles, blog posts, press releases, direct mail, emails and newsletters go unread. More thoughtful headlines create more informed readers and move them to act.
A headline has to earn the first three seconds.
With so much content across print, digital and broadcast, there is real competition for your customers' attention. Creating content and getting it published is cheap and easy. Every one of us has clicked on a hollow, attention-grabbing headline, and those publishers are stealing your customers' time with promises they don't keep.
Even when the content behind it is thin, they've taken the reader's mindshare from you. Those outlets are your competition. To get people to read your quality content, you have to appeal to their interests with better headlines.
Measurement has changed too. Getting published is no longer the way to judge a marketing effort. What matters is readership: who is reading what you wrote.
Tell the reader what your content is about, and skip the cute, short headlines that tease without explaining anything. That means getting over the common fear of using too many words in a headline.
When Signature Style PR switched to longer, more descriptive headlines, our blog traffic tripled week over week. Readers could tell what a post was about before deciding whether to click.
For your content to get published and read, the headline style has to fit both the type of content and where it will appear:
A few more to try: