How Writing 25 Headlines Changed My Perspective On Creativity

Eyes crossing, head spinning on a swivel, I’m in Comm 206 heck. The assignment: create 25 headlines about one (admittedly great) post that I wrote concerning an up-and-coming mental health professional, Justine Fortin, who writes a dynamite blog. Creating 25 headlines pushed me out of my comfort zone. It made me think deeply about the importance of writing headlines and challenged me to assess both my strengths and weaknesses when it came to engagement. I was left with a better appreciation of my own resilience and resourcefulness. I gained a better understanding of what effective headlines should entail and how to go about writing them.

At first, the task of creating so many catchy phrases that could capture the essence of my content, as well as draw in readers and viewers, was intimidating. Near the end, I became desperate to reach 25, so I began writing random headlines that didn’t even make sense. It got so bad that I used the help of Content Row to come up with a few of my headlines.

I realized that they should be both creative and clever. I brainstormed ideas for my headlines that would be answered in my post. Then I began writing out my headlines, one by one. I started to understand and appreciate the process of writing headlines.

Twitter analytics gave me a small but interesting sample of reactions. The first headline Is the Best Conversation Starter About Mental Health and the third headline The Future of Mental Health According to Experts showed slightly more than 14% engagement rate. In contrast, the second headline The Single Most Important Thing You Need To Know About had almost triple the engagement rate of the other two. My hypothesis for its stronger response is that, especially on a social media platform like Twitter, efficiency matter when people are scrolling through dozens of tweets. It’s possible that the phrase “the single most important thing” engaged this audience most effectively.

Developing headlines of my own has allowed me to gain a new appreciation for journalists who do this every day. In the end, writing 25 headlines has been a grueling task but I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. It has allowed me to do something I’ve never done before, which is to produce powerful and engaging headlines that will help my writing get more views from a larger and more focused audience. In addition, it has helped me to synthesize my creativity, writing ability, and knowledge.

#COMM206

#SingleMostImportantThingAboutTweets

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