Content Marketing: Focus 80% of your content strategy on this one thing: Your Headlines

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.”

The article’s author credits Upworthy – a site about “awesome, fun, interesting videos and graphics about stuff that matters” with honing the technique of effective headline writing. Upworthy CEO and co-founder Eli Pariser “says his writers try 25 headlines before publishing.

“A good headline can be the difference between 1,000 people and 1,000,000 people reading something.” And, the results?

In just 11 months they built a huge audience – 8.7 million unique visitors per month (as of November 2012). 

Their growth is impressive and they give the credit to their headlines: “It’s the easiest way to dramatically increase the virality of what you do and I guarantee you’re not spending enough time on it,” Peter Koechley, cofounder of Upworthy, said. “

The article continues with these examples which are hard to paraphrase, so I’m copying it to give you the full benefit.

Article

Upworthy mainly curates and rewrites news. They have very little original content. Take for example, some content that was already on the web – published under the headline, “The Cost of Kale: How Foodie Trends Can Hurt Low-Income Families.”

Upworthy came along with a new headline and the article went on to get over 4,718 likes on Facebook, 2,622 shares, and 3,909 comments. The article had just 34 comments. That’s the power of an effective headline.

How to Write 25 Headlines Fast
Hopefully – at this point – we all agree that headlines are important, but maybe you’re struggling with the idea of cranking out 25 headlines for every piece of content you write. If so, here’s how you can do it (while also ensuring at least 4-5 of the headlines are winners.

Let’s start with an example:
The above headline is from a product in the survival/preparedness niche. Let’s explore how to make it better.

To get a lot of headline ideas fast, use “The 4 U’s” (learned from AWAI). The 4 U’s are:

• Urgency – Does the headline give them a reason to STOP and read your content NOW?
• Useful – Does the headline portray they’ll learn something of value from reading the content?
• Unique – Does the headline depict the content as unique or something new?
• Ultra-specific – Is the headline something that only makes sense on this particular piece of content?

URGENT
So, looking at the example above, is it urgent? Using power words like “attention” and “urgent” help portray urgency but … there is no true urgency. Adding a deadline would help, like this:

Attention: Tomorrow Is Too Late to Read This Urgent Message To All Families

To Protect Your Family Plant and Grow These 5 Things Before Summer

New Parents: Read This Now to Protect Your Family Immediately

Keep in mind, these are just examples. The actual urgency is probably within the product and could have been plucked out with a little research and time.

USEFUL
Does the headline above seem useful? I don’t think so. We could make it more useful by promising to teach them something in the content, like this:

Attention: Urgent Message Reveals How To Protect Your Family

The Trick You Should Start Using Now to Keep Your Family Safe

Revealed – 4 Ways to Protect Your Family From Any Disaster

Once again – these are just examples. You’ll want to try others to see what works best for your readers and customers.

UNIQUE
To make the headline more unique, we could add a few stats, tell a specific story, or drill down to one point. Here are a few examples:

Attention: This Urgent Message To All Families Will Save Your Life

How One Family Saved $1,954 Preparing for Disaster

Dr. Neil B. Write Dishes Out Advice That Will Save Your Family From Disaster

ULTRA-SPECIFIC
Up next, we have ultra-specific: while the example headline does target families, it could be more specific:

Attention: Urgent Message To All Families in Texas

Urgent: Download This 3-Page Report For Families Living in Dallas, Texas

Urgent 2-Minute Message For Texas Families Vacationing in Hawaii This Summer

See how that’s done? We can quickly make the headline more compelling just by changing a few words.

Writing can be chore or even frightening to some business owners. All it takes is a little practice and perhaps reading a book on how to write well. I recommend you buy and read E.B. White’s Elements of Style. It is a small book that packs a lot of valuable information. The Seventeenth Rule states “Omit Needless Words”. You must be concise. Take out everything that is not useful. It is especially important in writing for the web.

Your web designer should guide you in creating the best relevant text (keywords) for your website. A keyword is a word or phrase related to your business that internet users would search for when looking for the products, services, or information you offer. If your webmaster is a good editor, they can whip that copy into shape in no time. Just keep writing and communicating what you know.

Help Is On The Way

We offer a service to help our customers On page and Off page
On Page: Perugi Design will help you write your blog posts with regularity and competency. We back it up with Google Analytics and regular reports. If you use Twitter and Facebook, we will set up your site so that it automatically posts there also. We import and set up an SEO plugin that will guide in adding titles and links.

Off Page:Our highly experienced associates offer several plans to bring full SEO to your site. The starter package is priced affordably and you can build from there if you want more targeted keywords, posts, content blurbs on 3rd party sites, blog comments and link submissions. Innovative tracking software allows both our team and yours to closely follow the detailed results of your SEO campaign. You will have reports sent to you as often as you’d like, and everything is transparent.

On Page or including Off Page SEO gives you choices for marketing your business.

Woo Themes just introduced Sensei, which is a new plugin that will allow you to teach and sell online courses from within WordPress. Imagine being able to create courses, write lessons and add quizzes. Set lesson and course pre-requisites, allow user registration and even charge for your course content using WooCommerce if you want. In their words: “Sensei aims to capture the core features of a learning management plugin, while not bloating it with features other existing plugins can handle. Sensei integrates perfectly with any well coded theme, as well as WooCommerce allowing you to charge for your courses!” Watch the Sensei overview video to find out more.

But this post is not just about adding Classroom functionality. I would like to review plugins that enhance a viewer’s experience when they visit my site or other sites I have helped publish. First, think about your audience. What do you want to provide them? What do you want them to take away? How will your site help you create business?

• Call to Action Buttons and Forms: Capture potential client interest and record leads.
• Slide Shows: Great for Travel, Photography, Garden, Fashion, Craft Sites etc.
• Shopping Carts: Market and sell your product and  integrate with Facebook, Etsy and other social networks.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Different types of SEO available.
• Google Analytics: View your site’s traffic.
• Member Only Sites and Pages: For clubs, families, non-profits or any organization.
• Community Event Lisitngs: Invite the community to list on your site.
• CAPCHA Spam Protection: Cut down on unwanted spam comments.
• Automatic Back Ups: Set to back up weekly or monthly.
• Newsletter Integration: Sign up or publish right from your wp postings.

These are just a few of the hundreds of plugins available to you as part of the WordPress community.  Next up will be a list of the Widgets and smaller pieces of functionality that may be packed into your theme and how to use them to make your site the best it can be.

For those of us who have worked in publishing, the writing piece is not a big challenge. But for others, it can be a big challenge. I get that. I tell those clients to write in their voice as if they are in their office introducing their business. Why is their service a good value? What knowledge can you share that can help a customer? What other companies complement what you offer? Is there news in your field that you can share? People want to know Your Story, or your company’s story. Are you willing to give it a try?

For more information on how and why to write a blog, I recommend my friend David Gadarian’s book, Better Business Blogging. It’s $6.99 on Amazon.

David says, “The book is about how to see more meaningful results for your business blogging efforts and it is the result of my own experiences with many business owners that were struggling with these very issues.  This book is for business owners and staff at companies ranging from the solo-prenuer all the way up to companies of 250 people (the high end of small businesses).  I feel confident in saying that I think there is value in this book for a wide range of experience levels as the bulk of the book is focused on how to create a better business blogging framework (sorry – no get rich quick schemes here!)”

Remember to feed Seymore … happy blogging! You see I just wrote one and it took all of 15 minutes!

But, WordPress is here, offering you an easy way to beat your competitors for that lucrative first page on Google. All you have to do is use Relative text in your website and write blog posts on a regular basis on topics that relate to your business or service. If you write with authority about something you know well, then you become the expert. How many other carpenters do you know that write with competency about woodworking and house renovation?

Writing can be chore or even frightening to some business owners. All it takes is a little practice and perhaps reading a book on how to write well. I recommend you buy and read E.B. White’s Elements of Style. It is a small book that packs a lot of valuable information. The Seventeenth rule states “Omit Needless Words”. You must be concise. Take out everything that is not useful. It is especially important in writing for the web.

Your web designer should guide you in creating the best text for your website. If he or she is a good editor, they can whip that copy into shape in no time. Just keep writing and communicating what you know.