So you have got some great content written. You are ready to let the world read it. Its comprehensive, informative and witty – a work of art in other words. You finally press publish but no one wants to read it. Why? It’s great? Maybe you need to check your title. If it doesn’t immediately seem worth reading, you’re audience won’t click on it, never mind read it.
This blog post is all about how you can transform the perfect content, into content your audience desperately want to read. The following 5 tips will drastically improve your blog titles, in ways that are tested and proven.
Numbers and Lists Work
This one may not be new to you but I still think it is underrated. Blog titles that contain numbers, especially odd numbers, tend to get more clicks than those without. By structuring your content in list format and adding that number to your title, you’ll be sure to get more clicks. There is something about lists that we are drawn to – think about why you clicked on this blog post?
Numbers also work in the case of describing magnitude. They can really help your audience understand the results they can expect to get from something too. For example:
- How To Get 1000 Twitter Followers
- How I Earnt £1,000 Through Instagram
- How To Transform Your SEO in 7 Days
Accuracy is Essential
This is potentially one of the most important ideas on this post – readers don’t want to be click-baited! You need make sure your titles are accurately describing what they will read. If your title talks about “How to have the best blog ever!” but you only talk about blog titles, your readers will be pretty disappointed. Readers are likely to click off almost immediately and they definitely won’t share it. Hence, you need to make sure your blog titles are always accurate.
With this comes the need to be explicit in what you are saying. Abstract concepts are not going to get you read. “How to make writing blog titles as easy as shooting fish in a barrel” probably won’t get much attention or clicks.
Write Multiple
When it comes to writing blog post titles, you won’t get it right first time. Just like you would consider and edit your content, you should be doing the same for your blog titles too. If you take 5 minutes to think of multiple titles for the article you’re writing, you would be surprise how many you can come up with.
- How To Write Killer Blog Titles
- 5 Tips For Writing The Best Blog Titles
- A Bloggers Guide To Writing Blog Titles
- How To Get Your Blog Titles Right Every Time
(The list could go on…)
Use Superlatives
For all you grammar nerds out there, (hi, me too,) then you’ll know what a superlative is. If not, it basically a descriptive word that means the highest extreme of something. So if something is the fastest instead of ‘fast’ or ‘faster’. Or, if something is the greatest instead of ‘great’ or ‘greater’. You get the idea.
Using superlatives like quickest, fastest, best, worst or cheapest, will really help to grab your readers attention. Some examples could include:
- The Quickest Way To Get 1000 Followers
- How To Write The Best Blog Titles
- The 7 Worst Blogging Mistakes You’re Probably Making.
What Do Your Audience Want?
This last tip is important for ensuring you all your efforts aren’t wasted and you should really be considering this before you write your post. You need to understand what your audience want. What is important to them?
If your audience are obsessed with immediacy and speed then words like ‘fastest’ and ‘quickest’ will get you good results. If your audience are into saving money, then words like ‘cheapest’, ‘affordable’ and ‘FREE’ are likely to appeal to them.
Knowing your audience is key to getting the best results, the most clicks and the most shares. A particularly useful tool for this would be your customer personas and if you don’t have one of these, then check out my article on how to create one.
Another useful tool is Google Keyword Planner which can help you discover new keywords and find out what your audience are really looking for. If your audience are searching for ‘blog titles’ instead of ‘blog headlines’ then it is a no-brainer which one you should be using. The more relevant your blog title to their search terms and their needs in general, the more clicks and views you are likely to get.
I hope you have found this post useful. I would recommend you go back through your old blog titles and maybe adjust them to better suit your needs (and that of your audience.) Let me know your thoughts in the comments below – I would love to hear from you. Other than that, thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day.
