Create Better Blog Headlines With These 10 Secrets

March 05, 2019 | 5 minute read

Blogging for business is an important aspect of any strong inbound marketing strategy, but it can’t be effective if no one reads your blogs. Strong blog headlines are the tools we use to intrigue people and entice them to click on our blog.

Think of your headline like your book cover (as much as we like to say, don’t judge a book by a cover, we all know people do).

Make headlines compelling enough to get your content read more and drive people to your call to action where you can show them all the great things your company offers.

10 Tips for Your Best Blog Headlines

#hashtags

Hashtags aren’t just for social media and their popularity can be leveraged in your blogging strategy for converting more leads into sales. When using hashtags in your headlines remember to keep it simple. If it’s too clever, too wordy, or too obscure you’ll miss the mark and risk being ignored. Hubspot.com analyzed some of the best hashtags from January 2017 to May 2018. Take note of a few simple, yet effective hashtags:

#WorldWaterDay
#Giveaway
#IWD2018 (International Women’s Day)
#Crowdfunding
#TuesdayMotivation

2. Negative words

Negative words in a headline, like “never” or “worst”, get 50% more engagement than positive ones. These words stir emotions in readers, grab their attention and get them to read your post: more readers means more chances to sell them on your product or service.

3. Ask questions

Starting a headline with a simple question like “what is” is an effective way to appeal to readers’ emotions. It promotes an easy-to-digest conversational tone that creates a curiosity gap, which intrigues readers to the point where they must read to find out the answer.

4. Put keywords in the front

Use your well-researched powerful SEO keywords at the front of your headline to rank high on search engine sites. This will ensure that you will easily be found by your target audience or persona.

5. Keep it to 6 words

According to VentureHarbour, using as few words as possible is key to headline success. This word limit ensures you can get your message across mediums like Twitter that limit how long your posts can be. The quicker you can get the jist of your article across to your reader, the more views it will get.

6. Power words

Medium.com recommends packing some punch into your headlines with some vigorous verbiage like:

Secrets
Truth
How to
Experts
New
Love

7. Evoke curiosity

Try writing your headline once and then put some meat on the bones with words that appeal to specific emotions. For the best results, create a list and highlight a number like: “3 ways to make the best omelette (You won’t believe #2!)”

8. Include numbers

Headlines with numbers are 36% more popular than those without. Some great examples of using numbers for headlines include:

9. Ask a strange or funny question

Weird gets attention. Wordstream.com suggests getting quirky with your headlines. Strange questions stand out and implore your readers to seek the answer. A note of caution: don’t take it too far and offend or put your readers off. Know your audience and the time and place to be sarcastic and silly.

10. Mix in some mystery

Don't give it all away in your headline. Your blog posts have a lot to offer and the goal is to get people reading them. If you do spill all the beans, your reader won’t have a reason to click. Here’s a good example from The Conversation: “Earthworms are more important than pandas (if you want to save the planet)”; it gets the reader wondering, why? And will entice them to read more.

There’s an art to writing captivating headlines and the content to compliment them but if your schedule doesn’t leave any time for headline or content generation, hire a team of 6 for the price of one with the copywriting professionals at Tangible Words. Let professionals create custom content from a fresh perspective that’s in line with your vision and speaks directly to your target audience. Copywriters align your company and content objectives to generate more than just headlines that will get your blogs read, but the content that goes along with it.