Today I found myself scrolling through the Top Stories on Medium trying to dissect each post title to figure out the perfect combination of words to draw people into my post. (Sorry I’m a marketer it’s what I do!) Most of them were either a question, or started with “How” or ended with a line of periods leaving you hanging.

After reading through all the top stories, multiple times, I was able to dissect them. I found the bottom line to be that humans are just curious. It’s how we have grown to where we are now in life. We like asking questions to learn, and we like seeing what is on the “other side”. Hell Christopher Columbus had to see what was on the other side.

That why when you’re on Facebook and you see a post that says, “What this mother did for her child will make you cry” it makes you want to click on it. Look whenever I’m on Facebook, that’s what I end up clicking on any more.

Vine plays on that same exact thing. You hop on the app and three hours later you find yourself asking what the heck happened. Because you are curious to see if you can get a quick laugh or learn something new from the next video.

But here’s the thing. The curiosity gets the persons foot through the door, but if they don’t like what they see, they won’t ever come back. That’s why Buzzfeed is successful. They create post like, “The 10 things to do when you’re bored” but each of the 10 things are actually worth reading. Same with Vine, you only scroll so far until the videos stop being funny than you get off.

So that brings me back to writing the perfect Medium post title. Yes, you can bring some people in by having your title ask a question, say the word “How” before it, or leave the reader hanging, but you better have some great content in that post or that reader is never coming back.

Provide value and they will stay, provide crap and they will leave.

Thanks for reading! If you liked it then “Recommend” it. I would be super stoked!

You should also check out my Instagram where I post pictures like this.