Great headlines attract more people to your message than any other part of your writing. Most writers spend less than five minutes coming up with their headlines.
They work for many hours writing a great blog or article to attract the attention of their market. Then they fail to write a headline that makes the reader want to go on to read the full article.
Great headlines increase readership
David Ogilvy once said “On average, five times as many people read the headlines as the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” Does your headline convince readers to invest their time reading your blog?
Many writers today invest significant time learning SEO writing to increase their article’s findability through Google. They miss the opportunity to attract more readership through a compelling headline. Does your digital and content marketing lack this critical success factor?
Content marketing is different
Writing headlines for blog posts, white papers, and articles are not like writing headlines for other B2B marketing materials. Many old school direct response copywriters fail to adjust their writing strategies to the Google-dominated media landscape. I help my clients avoid this trap.
Because of Covid-19, many B2B writers have increased their writing duties significantly. My long term clients have me working with their marketing teams to pivot their marketing strategy, incorporating more videos, webinars, blogs, and more comprehensive client conversion strategies on their websites. How are you responding to your changing markets?
If you are just starting to write blogs you might find this article helpful Can We Make Blog Writing Easier for Entrepreneurs?
Mobile is changing your readership
My marketing teammates are half my age and mobile enabled. They are not afraid to move on very quickly if they don’t see what they want. It keeps us on our toes.
Since many of you are doing the same thing today. I decided to share a shortcut on how to write more effective headlines for your content. I learned a 5 step process that make writing more powerful headlines and sub-headlines a breeze.
Effective content headlines:
- Communicate a benefit
- Are clear
- Are specific
- Get attention
- Promise transformational benefit for reader
If you keep this checklist in front of you when writing your headlines, your headlines not only get read more times, they also get more shares. Much of your content marketing is driven off social media. Current tracking by Twitter states that over 80% of what is shared is not read by the person sharing it.
If this is the case, then you must work harder to get people to read your articles or blog posts. Do a quick test to see how many of these qualities your headlines have. The first four have been shared for many years.
The missing secret
I’ve added the fifth quality because most people who work in B2B are overworked and underappreciated. Over 70% of the workforce would leave their job if a better opportunity came along. However, many of these same people feel less qualified for the next opportunity. If you articles align more closely with their personal agenda, you get read. Next week, we talk about each quality and how it applies to your writing efforts.
You might enjoy this earlier article for more tips on better headlines Can Better Headlines Help Bring You More Clients?
See you next week.
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