Headline Writing Tips – Using Power Words, Part II
Headlines written in the form of a question are very effective, as they also appeal to your readers’ emotions. When they read a headline written as a question, they’ll answer the question in their head. Most likely they will continue reading if the question identifies a specific need, want, or desire. Headlines beginning with ‘how to’ are especially successful, since the Internet is all about information. Internet users have a strong desire to learn. A headline beginning with ‘how to’ immediately grabs your readers’ attention and forces them to read on. It is important to remember, though that all the power words and questions will not help if your readers get bored half way through your headline. For that reason, keep your headline short and to the point. Give them just enough to want more and let your story do the rest.
Think of your headline as the message on a billboard. You only have a few brief seconds to get your main point across.
Recent research suggests that users decide to stay or leave your site in 8 seconds or less. In that short amount of time, headlines are the one piece of copy that users will actually read. Over 90% of readers are coming to your site only to skim over it and decide to leave. A simple way to remedy this is to grab these readers’ attention with an appealing headline that draws them into the rest of your story. Website visitors are looking for information fast. The best headlines for the web immediately communicate facts. If you can feed readers’ hunger for knowledge, you will be rewarded with more readers.
Many people will see your headline in a list of headlines in their feed reader. Most people are busy and do not have the time, or desire, to read every post that is in their feed reader. They will read only a dozen or so at most, and they will choose to read the ones that have headlines that catch their attention and seem interesting to them. Other people will find out about your story through blogs, and most often the link they will see from that blog will be your headline. If the headline is interesting, they will click the link to read the story. If it isn’t, they’ll move on to the next one that is.
Be interesting, but not overly mysterious. Readers are not usually willing to click into a story just to figure out what a headline means. Being interesting does not mean making readers guess what a story is about, but telling them exactly what the story is about and highlighting the most tantalizing details of the story in a way that makes them unable to resist reading it.
