25 Headlines: Painful but Promising!

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Earlier this term, we were asked to check out Upworthy’s 51 slide slideshow on how to make something go viral. The slideshow is fun and easy to read through but the key to creating an epic headline… Not so much. Upworthy suggests that in order to create your best headline, you must crank out 25 headlines. And let me tell you, it’s a lot harder than it sounds.

The first 8–10 are pretty easy, the next 4–8 get pretty challenging, and once you get past that point is when all hell breaks loose. I’ve never had the urge to throw my laptop in the oven at 400° F so bad in my life. The process of coming up with those final headlines is like trying to fill a bucket of water with a pasta strainer. It's like a neverending loop of brain fart after brain fart. Sure enough, after torturing your brain enough, you are able to poop out the remaining headlines.

This is when you begin to re-read everything you’ve put down and surprisingly, you start to like what you see. You make your final tweaks and there you have it, two or three decent headlines.

This is my entire list, the three in bold are the headlines are the ones I liked most.

1. Mayor Julie Akin’s Leaves the Chat
2. City Council Conflict
3. Ashland City Council Members Bump Heads
4. True or False? Allegations are made against Mayor Julie Akins
5. Two members of the city council resign in 6 Weeks: Find out potential reasons why?
6. Mayor Akins Hides from Allegations
7. Mayor Akins Get Put on Blast
8. Own Up or Leave Chat?
9. Actions Speak Louder than Words
10. Mayor Akins Shows Her True Colors
11. Bad Connection? I don’t think so. Mayor Akins Leaves Virtual Meeting!
12. Toxic work environment
13. You can run but you can’t hide
14. ‘Employees leave management, not companies’. The information behind allegations provided
15. Can’t Stand the Heat? Mayor Akins Leaves Meeting.
16. Akins, Moran, and Dequenne are all thrown under the bus. Akins leaves!
17. Fed Up! Mayor Akins leaves the meeting following allegations.
18. Mayor Akins has left the chat
19. Stephen Jensen Brings the Heat! Mayor Akins Leaves.
20. Exposed! Mayor Julie Akins leaves the meeting!
21. Chaos! Mayor Julie Akins leaves the meeting!
22. Members of the city council claim their work environment is toxic.
23. Julie Akins Did What??? Evidence of Creating Toxic Work Environment Provided
24. How does Mayor Julie Akins deal with adversity? Leave the meeting, that’s how.
25. Mayor Julie Akins exposed!

Cringey, I know. I came up with all of those very mediocre headlines and still didn’t go viral. While I didn’t go viral, I did catch the eye of a few more people than I did the first time I posted the article. Take a look for yourself:

This is the first tweet about the post which received one like from my professor to acknowledge he received my assignment. It’s okay, you can laugh. The next three are after completing the 25 headline exercises, still not viral but progress was made.

Tied for last place with one like a piece are Tweet #2 and #1. Last but not least, Tweet #3 came in with a whopping four likes. Please, give a round of applause for Tweet #3! Below you can see more on how the Tweets performed.

Twitter Analytics

In closing, my Tweets did not get quite the response I was hoping for but there was definitely some progress made. Maybe with a better topic and the correct framing, I can go viral one day. As awful as it was, I definitely see myself using the 25 headline exercise in the future. The exercise challenges you to dig deep and channel some real creativity. A fun experience overall.