Headline writing: 7 types to avoid, 6 to emulate

Lean in close as I share this blogging secret: Stop writing sucky headlines.

In today’s world, you must craft a descriptive, accurate, catchy and tweetable headline. I know people have written about this aspect of blogging before, so I am mystified as to why it remains an obstacle to so many bloggers.

If you don’t have a headline that grabs me by the throat in a nanosecond, you lost me, and most other people too.

I swiped a couple headlines from my blog reader to illustrate both good and bad examples. Maybe one of them is yours?

Here are real blog headlines that were so bad I could not bear to click on them:

1. “False hope”

The headline is smug. The writer assumes the post is so epic he/she doesn’t even have to indicate what it is about. Unless you’re Malcolm Gladwell, I’m probably not going to read this.

2. “Your video presence”

This has the potential to be an interesting topic, but the headline is too generic. It doesn’t tell me enough about the angle of the article to force me to take the next action. I’m a busy guy. Sell me, baby.

3. “What’s in a word?”