Lawrence Medina

When creating a blog post, what is the most important element to work on? (While, the answer should be clear to you, since it’s the first you read, I’ll continue for a small tirade for two more sentences). Should you place the keywords and phrases? Should you focus on the links that will connect to your post?

Those are all elements to remember, but the most important element you should take the time to shape, would be your headline.

What is a Headline?

The headline is essentially the title of your post. However, it goes beyond being a title. You see books have the luxury of having metaphorical and odd titles. News has the right to be clickbait (at times). Comics, manga, and graphic novels can pull intrigue from novelty of names and subheadings.

Where then do the headlines for your blog post lie?

You can be fun and brief with it, but the content within cannot betray your headline. That is why news holds the right to be clickbait, as it is a constantly evolving news story.

You can be strange and metaphorical, but then new readers will look at it briefly and decide right away, that your blog post does not have the information they are looking for.

You can potentially try and do an interesting headline name, much like comics, but that it best left for evolving stories. Each blog post you make will be different, some may fall in line with a series, but over all it must adhere to the main topic you touch on for your website.

What to do for Blog Headline?

The first thing you should find out, is the type of appeal you would like to use. “Appeals” are something we will break down at another time, but for the time being we’ll say it is the feeling you are trying to emulate.

Are you trying to be informative? Then have a straightforward headline that will detail exactly what you are going to be talking about and going over.

Do you want to be fun? Then create a headline that is witty, but on topic. It can be a play on words, but it’s keywords must bring attention to those in the know.

Once you have the feeling for what you are trying to accomplish, you should note one other piece of information.

How long should your headline be?

There is a very simple answer to this: As long as you want it to be.

That answer, however, is not helpful.

The real answer is, your headline should be long enough to detail what you’re talking about. That means your headline should be long. A short headline only works for certain ad spots, even then, most ads have longer headlines.

Plenty of people are willing to take the time to read a headline, because they won’t lose anything by doing so.

Also, it’ll be in a nice bold font. Everyone loves seeing bold, but not quite as much as being bold.

At the end of the day…

What does a Headline Mean to You?

For you, the reader, it’s the reason you read this.

Perhaps the headline scratched a question you held in that moment.

Maybe the headline brought about curiosity.

Just maybe, the headline gave you value you didn’t know you were looking for.

However, what does the headline mean to YOU? The one writing up a blog post, a company article, a newsletter, or even social media caption.

The headline is the difference between readership and obscurity.

A well thought out and detailed headline will, and I quote, “Bring not 2 or 3 times more readers, but 19 ½ times more readers.”

Okay, I paraphrased that. That quote is from John Caples, but it is true.

A good headline, a detailed headline, and a headline that uses the right appeal will always grab more attention than one that is a headline for headlines sake.