Why People are Enticed by Headlines

You’re here aren’t you?

But why?

If I had named this post “Strategies for Increasing Click-through Rates” you probably would not have found my post. Odds are you found this post because of social sharing. People share posts or “curate” them when they find them to be relevant, topical or humorous, and usually do so when they fit within their brand’s interests.

When titling your blog posts, try to keep in mind who your audience is. You cannot write a title that is going to entice everyone so focus on the people that you want to join your tribe. If you’re a food blogger, you want to attract people that enjoy food to your blog, not chemists and woodworkers, so make sure your titles are attractive to people that share your interests.

Keep them short. Remember, people will hopefully be tweeting and sharing your posts through social media, so if your title is more than 100 characters, it’s probably not going to fit into a tweet with a URL. If your headline is long, make sure the important bits are in the first few words in case your title gets truncated when shared.

Last, but not least, keep them topical. There is nothing worse than having a misleading headline. Attracting people to your website to generate traffic is a strategy used by every successful website, but by misleading viewers through irrelevant headlines, you are destroying your brand or website’s reputation.

If you use these few tips, you should see more and more people clicking your links and sharing them across the web. If you want to learn more about how to get your brands message out through social media, send me an e-mail or visit my consulting website, McDermott Media. If you found this helpful, please remember to share!

 

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