Boost Your Views Dramatically with These Powerful Headline Tips
It shouldn’t come as a huge shock that your headline is the most important part of your article. The content is key for reads, but if nobody shows up to see your masterpiece, then it’s pointless.
Imagine writing something great only to have 2 views. It’s not a great feeling and it’s very discouraging.
Even if you have a good following yet have 70+% fewer views than usual, it’s disappointing.
With only a few key changes, you can ensure your article will get viewed.
Power words
Your headline should always have one or two power words.
The power word in this article is “Boost,” which implies improvement, enhancement, and increased effectiveness.
Some examples of power words are:
Transform
Enhance
Accelerate
Empower
Maximize
If you’re not sure what a power word is, I’d recommend using Google to find a list for what category you want. Here is an example of what I mean.
Action Words: Words that inspire action or movement, such as “achieve,” “conquer,” and “ignite.”
Descriptive Words: Words that vividly describe something or create a strong visual image, such as “dynamic,” “radiant,” and “exquisite.”
Emotional words
You should add these to the headline and not use them as a replacement for power words.
Emotional words evoke…emotions, of course.
They pull on the reader’s heartstrings and evoke some sort of emotion, good or bad.
Here are some examples of emotional words.
Heartfelt
Joyful
Empathetic
Inspiring
Nostalgic
Just like power words, I recommend searching categories of emotional words on Google. Here are a few examples to guide you in the right direction.
Positive Emotions:
Joyful
Excited
Grateful
Negative Emotions:
Heartbroken
Anxious
Frustrated
Neutral or Mixed Emotions:
Bittersweet
Reflective
Content
Length of your headline
This is something not typically discussed and there is no real guideline to this number.
Your headline should be long enough to convey what your article is about.
I’ve seen some appealing headlines that are 2–4 words long and others that are 15 words. I would stay between 8–14 words for a headline as a guide.
You have to play around with it and see what works better for your style.
Clickbait
Stay away from titles that don’t deliver. You can get away with it once in a blue moon, but your audience will be annoyed.
I’ll give you a personal story from earlier this week while I was on YouTube.
I wanted to know how to select a new template on a website I was working on and couldn’t find it anywhere on the edit menu.
So like most people, I headed to YouTube and searched how to change a template.
I chose the video based on the headline and length as I didn’t want to watch a 50-minute tutorial.
After watching about 3 of them, I realized you couldn’t.
Not one YouTuber mentioned that anywhere in their video.
All those videos were clickbait and it annoyed me.
A much better headline would have been to add how “You’ll be disappointed” or something to that effect.
When people click on your headline, they expect to read what you promised. They don’t want a clever trick to get them to read something.
If this article had no information to help you improve your headlines and views and was only about buying my writing course then you’d be pretty upset.
The best way to learn how to write headlines is by using this one method.
Scroll medium and see which headlines catch your attention and discover why they do.
I bet most of those have a power and emotional word.
Thank you for reading :)