Writing headlines for your blog is much like writing a sales advert. Your business blog headline, much like a sales message, should influence your reader to take action.
According to a test, it has been discovered that 8 out of 10 people read only your headlines but do not read the rest of your blog. Now that isn’t so good, because how can you educate your audience of your product and add value to your customers and influence their buying decision if they do not read your blog?
If you’re having trouble getting those clicks to your business blog, here are a few practical tips you can try when crafting your next headline.
But first, I hope you know that every blog post for your business should be specially designed for your target audience and they must not all be sales pitches. If not, you’d bore your audience and drive them away from your blog (and nobody wants that).
Tip #1 – Solve a problem
Promising a solution to your reader’s pressing problem is a sure way to get them to click and read your blog. That’s why ‘’How To’’ articles are so popular and effective, they provide solutions to the readers problems. Here are a few headlines that promise the reader a solution to his problem:
1. How to Save Your Business from Bankruptcy
2. 5 Easy Ways to Lose Your Baby Fat
3. How to Handle Disgruntled Customers
4. How to Manage a Bad Boss
5. Quit Smoking Once and For All by Eating These Fruits
Tip #2 – State a benefit
What’s the benefit to your reader from reading your blog post? Your blog should always contain information that will make your reader’s life, career or business easier or happier. Here are a few examples of headlines with benefits:
1. How to Win Friends and Influence People
2. How to Increase Traffic to Your Blog
3. 10 Ways You Could Use Your BlackBerry to Power Your Business
4.
Health Benefits of Groundnut
Tip #3 – Arouse Curiosity
Asking questions in your headline is a great way to get your readers curious in finding out the answer. Check out some examples of headlines that arouse curiosity:
1. Who Else Wants To Make 1 Millon Dollars Out of Excel?
2. Why Do We Like and Comment on Facebook?
3. Why Your Invited Guests Didn’t Show Up to Your Event (And How You Can Avoid it Next Time)
4. How a Company Increased Sales from 100,000 to 670,000 in 3 Days
5. The Secret to Getting a US Visa
Tip #4 – Use Social Proof
Humans are social creatures and we tend to follow what others have endorsed.
1. Who Else Wants to Be A Millionaire?
2. What Everybody Ought to Know About Beyonce’s Time Management Skills
3. The Secret to Jega’s Patience
Tip #5 – Shorter is Better
Finally, it is important to note that longer headlines tend to perform poorly. According to this infographic, the perfect length of your headline should be 6 words.
This is because we tend to absorb the first and last 3 words of a headline. And besides, if your headline is more than 65 characters, its going to be cut off on search results on search engines like Google and Bing.
Want to share your tips on crafting great headlines? Leave a comment below.
