AUTHENTIC HEADLINES
How to Make Your Titles Click-worthy
It’s about honesty and integrity in what you do.
Did I “bait you in” with the headline?
Does that make my title a clickbait?
I was discussing titles with another writer who said, “I don’t want to make my titles clickbaity.”
I used to think the same way until I had an epiphany. If I can’t entice the reader to open the link to my story — and if I intend to provide value — how much value is the reader getting out of my work? So, I offered a paradigm shift.
Make the titles click-worthy, not clickbaity
The term clickbait has earned a bad rap, and maybe rightfully so. The clickbait articles have baited us all into clicking on them only to find ourselves in frustration having to jump through hoops to find out there was nothing of value there. The story never delivered on its promise.
But that’s not you. You have value to deliver. However, if the readers associate your title with their unpleasant experiences, then they will most likely not click on it.
What to do? What to do?
It is a genuine problem. It’s a catch-22 situation. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. There has to be a solution, you think to yourself.
Understanding the difference
The secret for the success of clickbait lies in human psychology. We go online to read, hoping to find engaging, entertaining, or enlightening content. A headline that offers to satisfy one or more of these criteria makes for a click-worthy title. We want to satisfy our curiosity.
Unfortunately, some unscrupulous people have misused and abused click worthiness for greedy intents. They turned click-worthy into clickbait. As a result, readers are suspicious about headlines that promote the proverbial too good to be true.
However, there is one thing that smells of clickbait more than anything. There is too much ambiguity about the content of the story. While the title raises curiosity, it doesn’t at all hint towards its satisfaction.
A classic example of it is a headline like “If you want to have X (or avoid Y) do this one thing.”
If you don’t want your headlines to be clickbaity, avoid this characteristic at all costs. Always provide some hint about what is the answer to their curiosity.
What are you afraid of
Remember, you are here to provide value in terms of engagement, entertainment, and enlightenment. You are not here to mislead people in order to make money. That is the difference of intent between click-worthy and clickbaity.
The question is, what is the best way to serve your reader? Whether your reader clicks on this or that headline is not in your hand. Do what you can control 100% to give them access to your stories.
The purpose of the headline is to get your readers interested in your story. If the headline doesn’t do that, then your intention fails. Whether you have a weak headline or a supposedly clickbaity headline is irrelevant.
If you’re afraid to use a click-worthy headline because you think your readers may perceive it as clickbaity and avoid it, then you’re doing them a disservice. Besides, when your intention to serve is clear and well-defined, you’ll find that the Universe will conspire for you.
Use the tools, but trust your intuition
I started the story with the working title, Make your headlines click-worthy, not clickbaity in mind. I checked it on Co-schedule Headlines Analyzer, and it scored 67, which is not bad. Just three points away from what they consider good or acceptable.
Also, I didn’t like that it told the whole story. There was nothing left to curiosity. So I experimented with various versions of it and came up with a title I liked that also scored 81. I consider anything over 80 as excellent.
I wrote the story with “What Happens When You Make Your Titles Click Worthy” as the intended title. However, when I finished writing, I felt the story did not deliver on its promise of “what happens when,” so I changed it to the current title. It still scored 75, which I consider very good.
When you are authentic and operate with integrity, your intuition will guide and support you to reach the highest good, both for you and your readers. Trust your intuition. It’s never wrong.
Go out there to make a difference and leave the details for the Universe to handle.
As always, thank you for reading and responding.
More about me:
Rasheed Hooda is a published author and a regular contributor to ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium where writers support each other.
He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)
“You can let others tell you what it means to be successful, or you can decide it for yourself.”
