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5 Powerful Tips For Writing Irresistible Headlines

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How to Blog Series

by
Ali Abbas

Do you want more people to read what you write?
Do you want more subscribers to your blog?
Write irresistible headlines!

It’s that simple.

5 Powerful Tips For Writing Irresistible Headlines

Writing headlines is a craft; practice, and practice more to sharpen your skills.
In addition to practice, read about writing headlines regularly to make sure your skills don’t get rusty.

This post offers 5 powerful tips about crafting headlines. You might already know some of these, but one or two will surely make you slap your forehead. Others might sound absurd. But believe me they will go a long way if you employ them.

1. Write the headline first

The temptation is to write the headline after you’ve written the whole piece. Why not – you can write a better headline when the copy is there in front of you, right?
Wrong!

Headline is a promise.

You make promises before you fulfill them. Your headline is the same.
If you save the headline for last, after writing the monstrous copy, you’ll want to write the darn headline quickly and be done with it. That’s not how to blog effectively.

If the headline doesn’t get the required attention, it won’t bring the desired results — the people who are perfect for what you offer.

2. Highlight the biggest benefit

Most readers don’t come to find out what you do or why you do it. They are interested in things that make their life easier and better, save them time, make them money, make them healthy or beautiful.

Tell readers in the headline what your text will do for them.

3. Length doesn’t matter

Many so-called gurus preach that shorter headlines work better.
Nonsense!

14-word headlines can get as much readership as 3-word headlines.
Length isn’t as important as getting your message across.

It, however, is better to keep the title under 70 characters (including spaces) on the internet. Longer titles get truncated by the search engines which can ruin your most powerful headline.

4. Don’t try to be tricky

Don’t try to be over smart when writing your headlines. Hundreds of thousands headlines are competing against you. Readers are too busy to figure out what the heck you are trying to say with unfathomable mumbo jumbo. They will simply click another link — one with a clear benefit.

5. Don’t write incomplete headlines

I had a personal experience with this a few days ago.

Traffic was jammed and I, being bored to death, was looking indifferently at the surroundings. My eyeballs got fixed at two advertising posters of rival two telecommunication companies, posted on wall end-to-end. Their headlines read as follows:

I. The Treasure (Say by Company A)
II. Make Free Calls For The Next 24 Hours (Say by Company B)

I ignored the first headline wondering “a telecom company and treasure, what the heck” and the traffic had just started to move slowly, so I didn’t have the time to read the rest of the ad.

The second headline was imprinted on the back of my mind. Later on, I came to know that the Company A offered better value, but by then I had already purchased the services of company B.

Never use headlines that require reading the rest of the advertisement to be understood. Readers will quit at that very point. They have no reason to read on. Readers on the internet read too quickly to keep on reading to find out what you are trying to say.

What it all boils down to is…

To apply the marketing wisdom of P.T. Barnum:

“You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.”

The sole purpose of a headline is to attract people who are most interested in your offer. Follow these 5 powerful tips for writing irresistible headlines. Ignoring them is simply wasting your time as well as money. Prove it to yourself!

What rules do you follow when writing headlines? Share in the comments.

Author’s Bio:
Ali Abbas is a freelance writer and blogging enthusiast. At the Writers Blog (), he shares his innovative ideas for starting a real, sustainable and profitable online writing career. To learn more about writing headlines, download his FREE Report: Secret Ingredients To Writing Killer Headlines That Always Get Noticed.

5 Simple Ways to Deliver Irresistible Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

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Be Irresisible!

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If you’ve been developing a business online in the last few years, you’ve probably heard statics regarding the brief amount of time we have to get and keep the attention of first-time visitors. What was almost 20 seconds in 2005 now is being described as something between 8 seconds and 10.

Getting folks to arrive is the first step, of course. In that, an attention-grabbing, killer headline is everything.


Click image to access complete podcast at The Onion.

Whether it is something completely original and novel, ultra-specific and geared towards a niche, or just incredibly compelling, good headlines on the Web always win.

They always win, except when they don’t.

If a headline delivers traffic, but the traffic immediately bounces away, can you say the headline wins?

A killer headline will get traffic, but what keeps folks reading?
We have to deliver great content to give that headline legs or that traffic will bounce away.

5 Ways to Deliver Irresistible Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

Strong businesses are built on strong relationships. What transforms a headline clicker into someone who hangs around? What turns first-time visitors into people who want to stick around? What makes them stay and already thinking about their return? Here are five things you can do to make it more likely they get what they came for.

Five Ways to Deliver to the Clickers Who Follow a Headline to Your Blog …

  1. Deliver content that your headline promises.
  2. Deliver content in short paragraphs using subheads surrounded by lots of white space so that people have room to think and breathe. Add a picture that supports the text and illustrates the content. First impressions count.
  3. Deliver it without making folks jump over ads or through hoops to get to the prize that the headline promises. Decide whether you want me to stay … there are other ways to get me to buy.
  4. Deliver it by responding to the people who take time to comment.
  5. Deliver it by making it easy to find more of what brought people to your site.

It’s not the visitor who never came that’s a loss. It’s the visitor who comes to find that we’re not what he or she thought. A great headline followed by something less doesn’t win. It doesn’t even finish.

The most important thing is deliver — do what we say we’re going to do.


Click image to see complete article from The Onion.

If the content you deliver is easy to access, faster to enjoy or employ, and adds value and meaning to a visitor’s life, you can bet that visitors will be glad they came and ready to come back. Easier, faster, more meaningful is irresistible. That’s a fact.

Great headline, lame blog post — who wants to deal with that? You’ve been there. What’s your response when you end up on one of those?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

4 Headline Types that Grab Attention Immediately

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By Terez Howard

How to blog series
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One Blogging Secret That Everyone’s Telling You

I have something to tell you. You’ve heard it before. You know it’s beneficial to every blog. The great bloggers write about this regularly and practice what they preach.

Attention-grabbing headlines. There, I said it. Secret’s out. or it’s been out for years.

4 Headline Types that Grab Attention Immediately

When I worked for the newspaper, my editor told us that our headlines had to tell our readers something. Sounds simple enough, right? It is pretty straightforward.

I wrote the following story back in 2005: “Katrina victims in Chester tell their story of survival.” I could have written “Hurricane story.” My now five-year-old headline told readers what to expect from my story and why they would want to read it. My second, obviously bland headline example doesn’t tell you anything. It sounds like a fictional piece on a hurricane’s journey through an area.

Your headline needs a voice. While it doesn’t have to be a summary of your entire blog post, it should give your readers a taste of what to expect.

What kinds of headlines should you write? Here are four:

Raise a question

You can specifically ask a question, but your headline does not have to be a question. Rather, readers will ask themselves a question and want to know the answer.

For instance, my headline for today: “One Blogging Secret That Everyone’s Telling You.” What secret? Why’s it a secret if everyone’s telling me? Who’s telling me? These are the questions my headline raises, and I provide the answers in my blog.

So when you write a headline that raises a question, be sure to provide a satisfactory, thorough answer to your audience.

Include a list

“101 Blogging Topics That Will Keep Readers Coming Back In Hundreds”

Once again, readers know what to expect, that when they click on your post, they will see a numbered list, from 1 to 101. Why do lists make wonderful headlines? Bloggers will tell you how the search engines love numbers and how numbers are memorable to readers. These points are true, but not my focus.

From a blogger’s standpoint, lists are easy to write. As a writer, a list organizes my thoughts for me from 1 to whatever. From a reader’s standpoint, lists are easy to read. You expect a comprehensive, systematic piece of information.

Make a how to

People love a good how to. I love how-to’s. I followed a how to count calories and lose weight story and shed 10 pounds.

Tell your readers exactly what they will be able to do if they follow your how to. A how to headline does not have to be so basic, though. It could be a “How to not…” or a how to do something metaphorically, like “How to pop eyes with your headlines.”

Be compelling – Make it urgent

What makes you want to click on a blog post? It piques your interest. With the three aforementioned types of headlines, each and every one should be compelling. It kills me that bloggers spend their time writing a well-researched, thoroughly engaging post and don’t give any time to the headline. It’s an afterthought.

That doesn’t mean you can’t write your headline last. That’s a fine idea and preferable to many bloggers. I tend to write my headline first and tweak it as I write make it fit the entire post. Do what works for you, just so you give time to your headline.

Your headline is your appetizer. It prepares your audience’s appetite to the main course. Does your headline induce hunger? Hey, sounds like a headline!

What do you do to write an attention-grabbing headline?

 

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Author’s Bio:
Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas. You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

 

Thanks, Terez!
–ME “Liz” Strauss