Did I get your attention? Good, beause that’s what today’s lesson is about. Creating headlines that grab your readers and entice them into reading your article.
If you don’t get the attention of your prospect, you cannot expect to sell them anything. If you can’t make a connection with someone, you won’t get the opportunity to wow them or “make your pitch”. They will pre-reject you before you ever get your foot in the door.
Your article headline is the way you make this connection with your reader.
The newspapers are masters at creating headlines that captivate it’s readers and compel them to read the story, and that’s exactly how you should look at writing headlines for your website or blog.
Now, I could say pretty much whatever I wanted in my headline. Why? The subject of this article is attention grabbing headlines. I chose to use shock and curiosity to allure you into reading more. Pretty sneaky, huh?
Let me give you another example: If two identical newspapers were laying on the table, each with a different headline, which would you read?
New Study finds chemicals in local water supply.
OR
Chemicals in local water make second tails grow on small farm animals?
The truth is, It doesn’t matter how goofy or embarrasing your headline is as long as it grabs your readers attention. This is the only purpose of a headline (notwithstanding seo considerations) in my opinion. It’s a personal style thing so you’ll have to experiement with what works best for your target audience.
A good headline needs to create a connection, evoke curiosity, or trigger some other reaction in the reader which taps into a a personal emotion (such as fear) to get them to invest in reading past the headline.
If you have any thoughts on creating headlines please leave a comment below.
