“A fairly complex riddle”: Here’s 9 tips to write Medium headlines that will click with your readers
We’re just starting out our journey on Medium, so we feel a bit like a high school transfer student attending the first PE class at a new place, who has to learn the proper way to do stuff.
Since teaching others is the best way to learn, we’ve turned our research into a handy list of 9 lessons.
So, let’s begin:
Lesson #1: Make your headline a “fairly complex riddle” with a promise.
Bernard Lindemann says that your headline should pose as a riddle to your target reader, one that just cannot be left unsolved, especially because it
triggers frames, belief systems and then, gets resolved in the ensuing text.
If you mix the mystery with measurable potential benefits (i.e. by adding a promise to the headline), you have a chance to improve the results even further. Leading on from that, here’s how Brian Clark, the author of Magnetic Headlines, sees it:
Your headline is a promise to prospective readers. Its job is to clearly communicate the benefit that you will deliver to the reader in exchange for their valuable time.
I could end this article right here, because if you reverse-engineer why your psychology made you click certain Medium articles, and why you performed a “nevermind scroll” on the other ones, it will always map back to this one tip. Try doing that excersise on yourself.
Daniel Dor, a researcher from Tel Aviv University, punctuates additional 9 characteristics of a good headline in his research paper, and here they are:
Lesson #2: “Headlines should be as short as possible.”
That having said, if you shorten the titles, always weigh gained readers’ time against lost informational value. Put maximum possible value in the minimum characters.
Lesson #3: “Headlines should be clear and easy to understand.”
Your headline should be a bit like the game of chess. Simple and strict in rules (the contents of the headline), but mentally engaging in play (the underlying “riddle” of your headline).
Be direct, clear, tight.
Lesson #4: “Headlines should be interesting for your target reader.”
Before you publish anything, ask yourself:
Is this headline really going to make people read my story?
Lesson #5: “Headlines should contain new information, but don’t presuppose information unknown to the readers”.
Estimate the current knowledge of your target readers and use your headline to make a promise of filling in their blind spots and helping them to benefit from that incremental knowledge.
Lesson #6: “Leverage names and concepts with high “news value” for the target users. ”
“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” — Archimedes
How about tying your article to well-know people?
Lesson #7: Make your headline connected to previously known facts and events.
It goes back to the multitudes of frames and beliefs that good headlines trigger.
Make your headline seem like the story behind it is a part of an literary archipelago, not an isolated island. Don’t enforce the interpretation. Don’t limit the scope of the context of the story. Draw connections to new trends and help your readers form suprising patterns.
Lesson #8: “Make your headline connected to feelings, assumptions, and prior expectations of your target readers.”
That’s why being slightly controversial can win you some additional clicks.
Lesson #9: “Headlines should frame the story in an appropriate fashion.”
Most often it just means pointing out the human factor of the story.
So, which kind of headlines work on Medium?
Now depending on what kind of story you want to publish on Medium, you should pick a proper mix of the strategies listed above.
From our analysis of the top Medium articles, I think that the key headline strategies to follow here are the following:
- don’t write headlines that demand massive processing efforts from your target readers,
- refer to the human factor in the story, i.e.:
trigger frames and belief systems in the reader’s mind; make them evoke images and scenarios
- leave a very rich context of interpretation,
- leave a lot of unresolved questions and loose ends,
- turn your headlines into cool riddles, but still make them clear and specific.
Of course you can also write slightly more theoretical story (like this one), but it has a much lower potential of going viral. If that’s a part of a bigger strategy of yours, then it’s cool too.
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Thanks…
Finally, massive thanks to the following members for their work:
and
- Tomek,
- Wojciech,
- Norbert,
who provided massive feedback, and
who supported us.
