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What is the main factor that makes you decide
to buy a newspaper or magazine?
It’s the front-page headline – if it’s
enticing enough you might just buy the whole paper, right?
The same goes for any article or blog post
that you write. Effective headlines grab attention and compel the reader to
read on.
1. Use numbers
“10 reasons why using lists in
your headlines works.” Nothing catches someone’s attention like a list of
reasons, secrets, or types. Because the readers get a very specific idea of
what they’ll gain from reading the article, they’ll be far more motivated
invest some attention to your article.
2. Start with
your keywords
What is your article really about,
or what do you want to emphasise? Think of the words your readers would search
for if they were looking for this article – and then use those early on in your
headline.
3. Questions
When you use a question headline,
you need to make sure it does more than just ask the question. You need it to
entice the reader into asking the question and wanting to hear the answer.
4. Use
interesting adjectives
Instead of
using the same old, boring adjectives you see in articles all over the media –
dig into your thesaurus and find a more tantalising one!
See what I did there? Instead if
just saying, ‘find a better one’, I used the word ‘tantalising’.
5. Use clever
tricks
There are some clever little
tricks you can use to make your headline even more catchy. Just by adding in some
simple alliteration you can make it roll off of a reader’s tongue with more
flair. Witty puns, if done right, will also usually catch a reader’s attention.
But you have to be careful here – a bad pun is not funny, it’s just irritating
or insulting. A good pun-ny headline
is also useless if no one understands it or it doesn’t explain what your
article is about. So when you think up a creative headline, test it on someone
else to make sure it works.
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