Copyblogger has a very useful post on Writing Headlines That Get Results that is well worth the read if you’re like most bloggers and spend a lot of time writing posts and then just slap a title on it.
‘According to some of the best copywriters of all time, you should spend half of the entire time it takes to write a piece of persuasive content on the headline. So if you have a blog post that is really important to you or your business, one that you really want people to read, you should downright obsess over your post title….’
Excellent, Darren. Your headline was strong enough to make me click on the link in my feed reader. :)
It’s definitely true. There are times that my post headlines are written as an afterthought, and I think it has an impact on those people who’re reading only the headline on their google or yahoo homepage. When I *do* actually come up with something clever, I can often spot the difference when I glance through my logs and spot a peculiarly large percentage of people coming to visit through a single post.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a headline or two to write.
Yes Darren, excellent headline. :)
Great resource, Darren. I focus on my headlines when writing marketing copy, but for some reason or another, I don’t really think too much about them for my blogs. I’m not quite sure why that is. After reading this, i’ll be taking another approach.
Vic
This is a great post, Darren. I echo this advice. Think about the title of your post, and use it to draw readers in. You don’t just want to entice them. You want them to ask the questions you’ll be answering. You want them to get excited about discovering more. If your post is long, continue drawing them in with the first paragraphs and at the beginning of each section.
One of my pet peeves is running down my blog feeds and seeing entry after entry that cause me to ask, “Why do I care about this?” I only ask this when I’m so bored that there is no obvious answer. It especially annoys me when I think I might actually be interested in the subject matter, but I find it extremely boring because the author failed to engage me.
Please, engage your readers! Make them care about what you have to say. We want to care. Really, we do. But you have to give us a reason to, and fast, and if you don’t we’ll go on to read someone else’s blog.
-TimK
h1>Herbal Care, Washington Mutual Review,
This headline made me click and read, and I will now be creating headlines for my financial blog to attract more readers because i know my content is awesome but my headlines aren’t
[…] importance of a good headline has been emphasized repeatedly here at ProBlogger (for example, here and here and here) and elsewhere, and for good reason. Few readers will read a post whose headline […]
I am still not very clear about the headings. My main heading should talk about the page or it should target few of the searched keywords.