Blog posts, press releases, marketing materials — whatever you write, it’s essential to top it with a killer headline so you attract the reader’s attention. Web Worker Daily offers seven tips on crafting headlines that’ll woo readers. A sampling:
Suggest That You Know a Secret. Sometimes a simple word, such as “secret,” can woo the reader. Who doesn’t want to know a secret? It has also been established in studies of headlines that the word “free” is attractive to readers.
Marry Two Concepts. You can often get a lot more information into headlines by using a simple colon than you otherwise would. “Tyranny at the Top: Executive Greed and the Fall of Enron” frames one plainly stated concept, after the colon, with another miniature headline.
I particularly like the suggestion to “jar the reader,” meaning you come up with a totally unexpected, goes-against-the-grain headline. You can find more headline-writing advice in this post from Modern Life is Rubbish. Photo by basykes.
