How To Write Amazing Headlines For More Clicks And Shares [Tutorial]
I started blogging in 2013, and seriously, you got the blog post yesterday and now the most requested tutorial of all time is here! Typically, when you watch a video on my channel, you're learning about online marketing, but there's more to it than that.
You're learning about creating content, social media and how to get breakthrough after breakthrough with your online presence. Sometimes I get excited about new tools and social media updates, but apart from that, I mainly stay pretty focused.
I have touched upon headlines before in other blog posts, guest posts I've written and in my Blogging Breakthrough Challenge, but I've never done a full post or tutorial on it. That ends today!
How To Write Amazing Headlines Using CoSchedule's Headline Analyser Tool
WHY ARE HEADLINES SO IMPORTANT?
Your headline is the one thing that determines whether or not someone will read the rest of your article. They see your headline and make a choice - do they want to read more or not?
Basically your headline is everything and headlines have played a really big part in terms of me being able to grow my own online presence, because I've been able to craft them in a way that arouses my reader's curiosity, but doesn't give everything away. That then makes them want to read on.
HOW DO I USE THE TOOL?
First, I get a headline ready that I want to use - I put it in the box, hit analyse and wait for the results.
You'll notice that when the tool has finished analysing your headline, you'll get an overall score and this is the first thing that you will see. You want to aim for a score of 70 or above or a green score. Headlines are scored in terms of red, amber and green - red means your headline definitely means more work, amber means it could use some improvement and green means you're good to go.
MY BIGGEST TIPS
Word balance is really really important...you want to make sure your headline has a mixture of common, uncommon, emotional and power words.
Next you'll want to look at your headline type - we covered this in yesterday's blog post. Lists, How Tos and Questions work best. If your headline is generic, the tool will tell you and then you've got some room to try and improve it.
When it comes to length, you can look at the number of characters and words. Be careful here, because you might have the right number of characters, but it could still be too long in terms of words. You also need to pay attention to how people read your content - the first three and last three words are the most important.
I always include the main keyword phrase in my headline as this is what's going to help people find and read your article. You can then use the keyword throughout your piece of content.
PRO TIP
If it takes you a few go's to get to your perfect headline, be sure to save the other variations in a document. Definitely pick your best one to use for your article headline, but you shouldn't let your other ideas go to waste.
You bore people when you just share the same message over and over again on social media, especially when it's your headline. I get that it has to do a lot of work, but you can attract even more people to your content by switching up the way you share your message.
After you've got your main headline, you can save the other variations to use as social content. This especially works well on Twitter when whoa!, you want to be sharing your newest blog post at least three times on the day it goes live.
Now, time to get to work. Go and plan your content for the rest of the month and analyse your headlines to make them great. Have a play around and see how you can improve to make sure your readers are definitely going to want to click it.
Create great headlines and you'll be one step closer to getting a breakthrough.