TODAY’S QUOTE
“On the average five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” — David Ogilvy
MY THOUGHTS
With so much content vying for attention on the Internet at any given second it is hard to choose what to click on. How do you decide what merits your attention?
There are many posts on various Internet platforms that tell you how to write an effective headline. Like most novice bloggers, I’ve gone through my fair share of these. These are a few points that I have managed to retain.
A good headline should be :
1. Attention grabbing — it should produce enough emotion for your reader to click on your post. It may provoke humour , fear , curiosity, alarm; anything that ‘hooks’ your reader.
2. Informative- it should tell you what the post is about. You don’t havet he time to check and see if an article is useful or not. Hence you are more likely to click on a post that is ‘clearly labelled’.
3. Engaging — it should keep your reader invested and interested in your content.
There are many more features of a good headline.
I will be looking forward to learning them from you.
Salted Caramel 
If I’m interested, I will read. I have been making myself read the article.
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What, this one? 😳
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Oh no, I always read blog posts. I mean more news articles.
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Here’s my thoughts: https://sparksfromacombustiblemind.wordpress.com/2022/09/26/blogging-insights-9-26-2022/
I was very interested in your remarks, Tanya. I took it a totally different way, but that’s what’s great about this prompt – the diversity and discussion! 🙂
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Very true Melanie.
I keep reiterating that the discussion that is provoked by a post is more interesting than the post itself.
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I always try to have ‘an angle’ for my post title to attract interest. A lot of course depends on what the post is about. There is a play on words, or a deliberate misspelling of a familiar word or using one that is a homonym of the correct one. Some headlines are obvious as to the article content, and others keep you guessing until the end. Again, it depends on what the post is about and the audience for whom it is intended.
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Totally agree Di.
And those are some great tips for an eye catching headline.
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It’s impossible to overestimate the importance of a great headline. No matter how experienced a reader you may be, the headline catches you and makes you stop. “The New Yorker” always had fantastic headlines, often better than the stories. “National Geographic” has great headlines — maybe even better than”The New Yorker.” I find myself stopping to read articles even when I’m in the middle of doing something else because the headline snags me.
As for writing them? If I wrote them that well, I’d have stayed in advertising and made a lot more money!
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To say it another way, “A book is judged by its cover.”
Do you agree?
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I don’t even notice whether or no a book HAS a cover. Headlines are not like a book cover. Headlines are part of the story — the first part. You only get headlines on posts and articles. Books don’t have them — maybe advertisements do, but the books don’t.
I think we need to regard headlines as the “introduction” to a post or article. Because it is. Very often a headline contains the one critical thing about the article or post — the SINGLE thing the author wants us to notice.
I wish I were a better headline writer. I’ve never been great at it. I recognize them when I see them, but I think body copy, not headline. I really should think the other way, but I never have. It’s probably why I worked in a writing position that didn’t use headlines. Headlines were not then or now, my strong suit.
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I read it!
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🥳
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Here is mine.
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Thank you 😊
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