How To Sell More And Beat Your Competition With Perfect Headlines
Did you ever read something that sounded boring?
Me neither.
That’s because we don’t engage with content with sucky headlines.
What Is A Headline?
A headline is an attention grabber.
It can be a title, a one line pitch, an image, whatever.
The goal of a headline is to grab your attention.
Take a look at this headline above.
Inadvertently, this publication acquired a ton of free publicity and engagement with its content, through it’s humorous headline snaffoo.
Conquer headlines, or your content doesn’t matter
If you write an amazing article but your headline sucks, is anybody going to give it a chance and engage with it?
Probably not.
To use a sales analogy, your headline buys you the first 10 seconds of someone’s time.
The intro to your content buys you next the 60 seconds. And the quality of your content determines if they finish the content or leave.
Want proof?
Look at the front page of Medium right now, which displays the most popular articles.
Do you see anything with a headline that doesn’t intrigue you in some way?
How To Write Perfect Headlines
Writing perfect headlines is actually pretty easy.
Do it like this.
- Decide what you want to write about.
- Generate a headline
- Refine it until it would make you click on the article (clickbait anyone?)
Types Of Headline
Perfect headlines can come in different forms.
Here are some headline options you could look at:
- Write a polarizing headline that will cause discussion (Why Facebook Ads Suck And You Are Wasting Your Time).
- Write an intriguing headline that will make readers want to learn more (Learn How I Made $93,000 In 3 Weeks Using Direct Mail).
- Write an informative headline that is self explanatory (50+ Best WordPress Themes For Freelancers).
- Write a benefit driven headline (How To Close More Deals While Working Less).
Or, write a headline like this:
Just kidding.
If All Else Fails
Copy someone else.
Take inspiration from someone who is succeeding at drawing in your target market.
Look at the headlines they use and copy the format.
There’s nothing new under the sun.
Emulating those who are writing killer headlines will help you get the gist of it and before you know it, you will be writing them all by yourself, selling more and beating your competition.
You stay classy Medium.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 325,962+ people.
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