I have worked with several bloggers through my blogging consultancy service and one of the things I have noticed is that many bloggers do not utilize the power of self-promotion.
If you are a small blogger, without self-promotion not many people will get to read your great content. I wrote an article on why you should actively promote your blog and today I will look at how your blog article headlines can help you promote your blog.
Content is king, but to help you attract potential readers you must write powerful headlines for your articles.
Your blog headlines attract people to your blog
Your reader is a busy person. They subscribe to many blogs and they follow many Twitter users. There are a lot of things on their mind and many companies and bloggers are competing to get their attention and a share of their valuable time.
When you send a tweet about your post, as you have a limit of 140 characters, you basically only have space for the title and the URL. Your blog post title is what your Twitter followers will see. The article title will make them decide whether to click or not.
Same with your RSS readers. Your blog article will be one headline out of hundreds of headlines that a reader gets into the RSS newsreader daily. If the headline doesn’t grab their attention, if the headline doesn’t make them curious, they will not click and they will not see your great content.
So your headlines must be sharp, they must grab the attention of the reader, and lead them to your blog by prompting them to click.
What makes a good blog headline?
Let us take a look at the top 10 most visited articles on my blog and analyze the article titles:
Each of my top 10 article headlines tell you one of the following:
- by reading this article you will learn how to do something
- by reading this article you will get a list of things, examples
So having “how to” headline or “top list” headline works best for getting the attention from readers. These types of headlines make a specific promise of what’s in store for the reader.
It is important to get to the point when writing headlines. Be direct and tell the potential reader what is there to learn by reading your post. Focus on what the benefits are to the reader. Say what problem you will solve for the reader and tell them how you will do it.
Blog content is still very important
Don’t forget the content. If you make a killer headline that attracts lots of visitors, and your content is not strong enough, not many of those visitors will convert into subscribers and customers.
Write a good headline but deliver the quality content. For a reader, nothing is more frustrating than clicking on a killer headline where the article doesn’t actually say anything.
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{ 6 comments }
Back when I started blogging, I used to enjoy coming up with clever titles for my posts. As time has gone on, I realize that keywords and precise phrases really are the way to go. You have only seconds to grab someone’s attention, and readers are looking for a solution or an answer to a question. Writing proper headlines will increase your readership fantastically.
Awesome tips. Thanks for sharing!
I feel like words like: ‘must have’, ‘must see’, ‘awesome’, ‘great’, ‘excellent’ and many others have been misused. Yes, it gets me to click but only to be disappointed when I find a post with something mediocre referred to as excellent.
Also, I think most tweets are re-tweeted not because they’re of a valuable content, but rather as a way of just re-tweeting so those you RT will do the same when you tweet!
@Corey Freeman – Thanks. I kind of had a similar experience some years back but now I just think of the reader before I write it, and everything makes more sense.
@Mokokoma Mokhonoana – Definitely a lot have been misused. Just look at social media sites like Digg and there are lots of headlines that sound great but the content is not even close. About RT’s, no matter why they are sent, it still brings your blog out to new people, and with a good headline they will click on it, maybe subscribe or become a client.
I tried article post like “Google pagerank 0″ and it grabbed a lot of attention. I use https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to help me think up title phrases. I pick out phrases that are least competitive since my pagerank is 0. That way I have a lot of chances to be #1 for specific phrases on Google. You want something that is catchy to audience and catchy enough for search engines to rank you high.
@Kai Lo – Definitely. Even though you are trying to write headlines to attract your readers you cannot forget SEO. Your keywords must be in your title to get the benefits of search engine rankings.
Hey Marko, thanks so much for sharing this great info! Love your blog