Five Common Headline Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Writing an article headline catches users’ attention and entices them into reading the rest of the article.
Thus, headline is truly the entrance to grab your users’ attention. Copyblogger.com lists 5 common headlines mistakes to avoid (more details found in copyblogger.com but following are my summary and my opinions):
1. No reader benefit.
Will the reader get benefit from simply reading the headline? If not, then modify your headline by asking the question “what good is it for them?”. Think about it and paraphrase your headline to convey this message.
2. Lack of curiosity
Integrate curiosity in your headline. Pairing benefit and curiosity will increase the chance of your reader to keep on reading. Use questions or challenges or intriguing facts to capture your reader’s curiosity.
3. Lack of specificity
Simply be specific. Use hard numbers or exact percentages if necessary. Having specific headlines increase the trustworthiness of the article.
4. Lack of simplicity
Make headlines as simple as possible. Headlines should tease and not tell the whole story. It should be like an appetizer, it is simple not heavy but entices or prepares the ‘readers’ for the main entree.
Eliminate unnecessary words. Stick to just one idea / concept to convey. Use down-to-earth words (eliminate all those ‘alien’ terms if possible).
5. Lack of urgency
Have you ever come across a headline that looks interesting but you decide to skip it first and return to it for a later read? The chance that you would return to it is very unlikely. Thus, creating an urgency in your headline will make (or ‘force’) your readers to read the article.
However, please be careful not to over-emphasize the urgency to all of your headlines as this will dilute the importance of the articles. Evaluate your articles, considering if it is indeed a must-read or not. Assign the proper ‘urgency’ to your headlines.
Having these 5 elements are important in creating a headline that effectively capture your readers’ attention and ‘forces’ them to read on.
Complete article can be found at: http://www.copyblogger.com/five-common-headline-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/
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