The following article in the series “The Art of Composing Excellent Blog Posts” is this one.
Not all excellent blog pieces receive the praise they merit. Thousands of blog entries floating about in a social media sea haven’t received the recognition they deserve. But, one excellent blog post does not necessarily make a great blogger; you must constantly produce unique content before your talent is acknowledged. I’ll recommend some awesome bloggers for you to follow and model your writing after until you develop your distinct style.
The second article in this series focuses on the blog post’s headline.
Writing Effective Headlines For Your Blog Posts
Picture yourself traveling at 70 mph on a deserted stretch of highway, where hundreds of billboards with various headlines line the route. While focusing on the road, you only scan them rather than read them. Headlines include things like:
This is a photo of my adorable kitten making a silly expression that resembles Robert De Niro.
What will happen if you attempt to know everything is described here.
Books
Writing tips from Seth Godin
Fantastic movies you should see before you turn fifty
Which headline will be the most noticeable if you’re traveling at 70 mph down a highway? The two most common answers, in my opinion, are 3 and 4, as the rest are too lengthy. Out of 3 and 4, 4 provides us with the most information because it specifies the post’s topic. Number 3 could be about anything related to books and contains insufficient information. Thus, this title will be skipped unless we know the blogger.
Countless blog postings are available, so readers scan their RSS readers to find the best ones. Nobody has time to read a lengthy headline, click on it, wait for the page to load, and discover that the article they clicked on was not what they intended to read.
Your headline should catch the reader’s attention from the very first word.
Highlighting and Chunking
Chunking
As we read quickly, we chunk the words together or highlight them. Chunking describes the process of organizing words into groups of three to five. It would make sense to limit the amount of reading to one or two chunks when individuals do this. I just saw four posts in the “Personal Development” area of my Google Reader that immediately jumped out:
Appreciate Your Self-Worth: A Quick Guide To Discovering Your Passion
How to Get Rid of Your Dissatisfaction
The Formula for Excellent Digestive Health
Most of the headlines in the list above contain two chunks, except headline 2, which has three to four pieces.
Here, we look at how to make the most of the two pieces, which would ideally be between 2-3 portions:
First section: Introduce your article while leaving the reader wanting more
How to, Ten Ways to, The Secret, The Best Ways, The True Truth, and Shortcuts to
Your first three to four words pique the reader’s interest. Look at the headlines above and look at the first 3-4 words; if you are chunking, your brain will naturally ask the questions:
How do you value yourself?
What is The Brief But Powerful Guide?
What to Kill and How?
The secret to greatness?
Readers and skimmers want to know more, so they reread the headline.
Inform your reader or skimmer precisely what you will discuss in the second piece. And leave no space for speculation.
The headline “How To Create Sunshine” leaves the reader with a further unanswered question about the second portion.
The post’s topic is made crystal clear to the reader by the headline, “How To Create Colored Candles,” which leaves no room for confusion.
Highlighting
Instead of chunking words, the other reader and skimmer will highlight specific terms. As in the following headline:
Markets tumble as shares fall precipitously.
The phrases “Plunge” and “Freefall” immediately come to mind.
Use powerful verbs and adjectives that pique the reader’s attention and appeal to their emotions while writing for the reader who highlights them. This occurs when we generally read, read newspapers, scan the headlines, and scan the titles of books in a bookstore. You can see how crucial it is to create a compelling headline that appeals to the broadest audience possible.
Adjectives, Nouns, and Verbs
Verbs
Make sure to include a few powerful verbs in lengthy headlines if you’re going to use them. The headline will stand out from the competition thanks to the verbs. Powerful verbs aid in the creation of a mental picture in the reader’s head, so grabbing their attention and briefly making them stop reading. The choice to continue reading the article or not is chosen at that precise time of quitting.
As in the illustration above:
Markets tumble as shares fall precipitously.
The verbs “Plunge” and “Freefall” stand out in the headline, communicate a sense of urgency, and grab the reader’s attention.
Nouns
Nouns are a technique to tell a reader how essential something is, and readers who underline words in headlines will be drawn to nouns that proclaim necessary things, such as:
Catastrophe Leads To The Collapse Of The World Economy
Disaster implies that something significant has occurred and piques the reader’s interest.
Adjectives
Verbs are a terrific method to grab a reader’s attention, but they could miss the reader’s emotion, which is another thing that makes a reader want to keep reading after highlighting words in a headline.
See the following headlines:
How to Safeguard Your Kids at Night
How To Boost Your Energy Every morning, they manipulate our feelings using words like “Safe” and “Energized.”
Conclusion
It is best to think about your headlines because they play a significant role in whether or not a reader will continue to read the rest of your blog content. After writing a few hundred pieces, you will know intuitively what will be successful and what won’t, and you won’t need to go through this procedure each time.
We’ll discuss including photographs in blog posts the following week. You may not think there is much to say about this, but you would be wrong.
In addition to writing the top personal development blog in the UK, Change Your Thinking, Steven Aitchison is the author of four books. You can subscribe to his blog to get three free ebooks. Join right now at Alter Your Thinking.
