A lot of sweat and tears can go into a great article. But even if you spend hours creating a masterpiece, its fate still depends on one thing: the headline.
If a headline doesn’t attract interest, people won’t click. And if people don’t click, no one will read your great article. So if you want your hard work to pay off, you need to become an expert headline writer.
That said, spending hours on a headline after you have just spent hours writing a post is not ideal. Luckily, there’s a structure you can follow to make your headline hunt a whole lot easier.
Steve Rayson from BuzzSumo did a meta analysis of what headline elements are most common in viral posts.
These are the five things that showed up the most:
- Emotion
- Content
- Topic
- Format
- Promise
Successful headlines don’t have to have every single element, but the best ones have at least three, according to the research.
Here’s an example of a BuzzFeed headline with all five elements in action:
Using these elements paid off for BuzzFeed – the post received over 650,000 shares and 2.6 million views.
So how can you be sure you’ve created a headline that will entice clicks and wow your audience?
You don’t have to, because we’ve done all the hard work and brought together this mammoth resource list of proven formulas.
Here are Five Title Blog Post Formulas You Can Tap And Activate:
How to
#1. How to Get [benefit] Out of [topic]
#2. How to [benefit] When You’re Not [topic]
#3. How You Can [benefit] Almost Instantly
#4. How to Become [benefit] When You Feel [negative outcome]
#5. How to Use [topic] to [benefit]
#6. How to Turn Your [topic] Into [benefit]
#7. How to Turn [topic] Into [benefit]
#8. Tips on How to Avoid [negative outcome]
#9. How to Take the Pain Out Of [topic]
#10. How to do [topic] In Under X Minutes
Source: jeffbullas
