Are Headlines Tangling Your Readers?

I’m up for a challenge.

Just recently, my friend and SEO blog­ging expert Andy Beard posted an arti­cle about an inter­est­ing case study.

After sim­ply reword­ing the head­line of a blog post, John Wes­ley lit­er­ally mul­ti­plied his traf­fic to one of his blog posts by 10 times.

With the same post!

In other words, noth­ing was changed except for the head­line. The arti­cle was exactly the same, word for word. But by chang­ing the head­line slightly, the blog post drew a ton of traf­fic, par­tic­u­larly from social net­work­ing sites.

Well, now’s your chance to have me do the same thing for you — and learn a thing or two, too. Here’s how. Let me rewire one of your own head­lines for max­i­mum sell­ing power. But there’s a catch…

Before I let you put me to the test, let me share with you a few tips.

I know that, with saleslet­ters, chang­ing the head­line can increase response, some­times by as much as 700%. I’ve seen this in split-​​test after split-​​test. And the rea­son is, while the copy may be good, the head­line is often where the bot­tle­neck occurs.

A good indi­ca­tor, if your copy is online, is to track your vis­its. If there’s a wide gap between the times peo­ple stay on your site, you know the head­line is the culprit.

In other words, if a lot peo­ple hit and leave, while many stay longer to read the copy, then you know the copy is good — and the fact it is the head­line that needs improvement.

(Those who stayed but for only a few sec­onds were not enticed enough by your head­line to start read­ing. But those who did were inter­ested. Whether they bought or not is a whole other ball­game. And a whole other blog post.)

Remem­ber, the pur­pose of a head­line is to get peo­ple to start read­ing. That’s it. But if the head­line is poor, generic or vague, it can deter read­ers who might greatly ben­e­fit from the con­tent — or the prod­uct being offered.

The ques­tion is, how do you do that? The best head­lines I’ve seen are those that start a story, make a shock­ing state­ment, tease a bit, offer a ben­e­fit or pre­pare the reader for what’s to come.

I’ve lumped these in my “3 x 3 Head­line Rule.”

That is, your head­line should cater to the three great­est human goals (to make or save time, effort or money), the three great­est human desires (lust, greed or com­fort), or the three great­est human teasers (curios­ity, scarcity or controversy).

(Or a com­bi­na­tion of any of these.)

But aside from these, I have found that the most pro­duc­tive head­lines have at least five com­mon characteristics:

1) They are clear.

No vague­ness here. Head­lines that are uni­ver­sally and eas­ily under­stood, that is they speak in plain lan­guage and cater to as wide a mar­ket as pos­si­ble, are def­i­nitely going to attract more read­ers. As the sar­cas­tic adage goes, “Eschew obfuscation.”

2) They are specific.

Most peo­ple tend to be gen­eral in their head­line in an attempt to sum­ma­rize the con­tent. A head­line is not meant to sum­ma­rize; it’s meant to cre­ate read­er­ship. You’re not writ­ing a book. You’re writ­ing copy.

3) They are targeted.

Who, specif­i­cally, is your reader? Bet­ter yet, who is your per­fect cus­tomer? Once you know who you are tar­get­ing with your offer, your head­line can both tar­get and qual­ify the reader even before they read your copy.

4) They are driven.

Head­lines don’t tell. They sell. They sell the reader on the con­tent of the copy — not on the offer. And as such, they are action-​​driven, whether that action is implied or stated.

5) They are newsworthy.

Sure, there will always be a place for benefit-​​oriented head­lines. But some of the most pow­er­ful head­lines I’ve seen of late are those that have news angle tied to them. They are newsy or newsworthy.

If there were a sixth one, I would say there was indeed another com­mon denom­i­na­tor. Although not found in all suc­cess­ful head­lines, it’s the fact that the head­line cre­ates vivid men­tal imagery. (Mean­ing, they are picturesque.)

If the head­line paints a pic­ture in the mind of the reader, it will engage the reader and com­pel them to read fur­ther. For exam­ple, “Zoom Past Your Com­peti­tors” evokes a bet­ter pic­ture than to sim­ply “Sur­pass Your Competition.”

OK, let’s have some fun. Shall we?

Here’s a cool way to learn how to write great head­lines by actu­ally watch­ing me work.

Inspired by Brian Clark who rewired post head­lines on his own blog for fun, and explained why mag­netic head­lines attract more read­ers by giv­ing his rea­son­ing with each sug­ges­tion, I’m pre­pared to do the same.

If you have a post you’ve writ­ten and it didn’t do too well, then give me the URL to your blog post in the com­ments below. I’ll pick a few of them (time per­mit­ting, of course), and I’ll rewrite the headline.

Even more than that, I’ll explain my rea­son­ing behind the change in a sub­se­quent blog post. That way, you’ll get to see the change and learn why I made it.

Here’s the catch.

While I’m pri­mar­ily a saleslet­ter copy­writer, I must limit myself to blog posts because I will need to read the entire post — I don’t have the time to read each and every saleslet­ter, word for word.

Also, I can’t promise that my head­line will gen­er­ate a mas­sive influx of traf­fic like John Wesley’s blog men­tioned at the begin­ning of this arti­cle. But I would love to hear from you and the results my change might do.

Ready? OK, go ahead and let ‘er rip…

About the Author

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