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Picture yourself selling something on the street. Your content is your product and your headline is your pitch. Thing is, you’re not at some relaxed market fair, where visitors leisurely visit each vendor in turn and casually sample their wares. No. You’re on a busy Manhattan street (pre-Covid, that is), with countless other vendors just like you all clamoring for attention — and the only customers are rushing by you, trying to get to work.

And you need somehow get them to stop. To turn. To walk over to you and, over all the other vendors around you, look at what you’re selling.

That’s the internet. A giant world swamped with content, whose readers are currently estimated to have around 8 seconds worth of attention span to spare.

If you’re playing the numbers game — if you’re hoping to get noticed by the virtue of your content alone — you’ve already lost. The numbers are against you. You’re just too small in too big a pool.

You need to stick out. You need to be irresistible. You need to grab that attention instead of waiting for it to come to you.

And you do that with a headline.

Of course, the question is: how? How do you create a headline so irresistible that people can’t help but click on it?

There’s a lot of information out there about headlines, ranging from best words to use to tips on how to come up with good headlines. I’ve linked to some of those resources throughout this article. They’ll help you get a little bit more in-depth on certain specifics.

This article, though, will focus on everything you need to know to create the right headline for your content. Starting with what you want your headline to achieve to knowing how to tow the line between irresistible and unbelievable, along with all the best ways to get your headline to achieve its goal.

Let’s get to it.

This is the golden rule of headlines. Your headline shouldn’t just announce what your content is about. If you want it to grab attention, it should promise something — if you read this article, you will get x.

So ditch the meaningless puns and the clever wordplay. If you’re writing about drums, please don’t title your headline, “It’s all about that bass.” It might sound cute, but it doesn’t actually promise anything — and it’s therefore not an effective headline.

But the promise is just the first step. Anyone can make a promise; you’re not gonna stand out from the crowd if all you did is make some basic promise. You need to tailor that promise to make it irresistible. Here are a few ways to turn a headline into an irresistible promise:

No, I don’t mean to word your headline in some obscure way that no one else thought of and claim you’re being unique. I mean to offer something unique — either because no one is speaking about it, or because you’ve researched the topic more than the competition, or maybe just because you’re offering a new angle that no one else thought of. In other words: check what is already being offered on this topic and see what you can offer that no one else is.

Here’s the thing. We tend to talk about the topics we want to talk about. That’s human nature. But just because we want to talk about it doesn’t mean we should make it about us. “How I Make a Living As a Copywriter,” is a far less enticing headline than, “How You Can Make a Living As a Copywriter.” Focus on what your audience wants — and deliver it to them.

Of course, like with any rule, there are exceptions. Most breaking news headlines, for example, simply declare the content of the article — and that’s more than enough to get them reads. But there’s a reason for that: their content is so interesting that simply declaring the content is sufficient. If you’re writing about content like that, you can probably ignore everything in this article.

Most of the time, though, simply declaring the content won’t be enough, and you’ll need to turn your headline into a promise.

Of course, you might then think you should go to the extreme. If people are attracted by promises, then you should promise something insane.

The thing is, the whole reason a promise works is because you then deliver on it in the content of your article. If you don’t — if you make a huge promise that you can’t live up to — then, though you might get people to read this specific article out of curiosity, you’re going to damage your reputation and have a much harder time getting them to read next time.

In other words, avoid clickbait titles. Everyone wants to make a million dollars in five minutes, but titling your article, “How to make $1,000,000 in 5 minutes,” is just plain dumb. That’s clickbait. There’s no way you can actually deliver on that promise.

This is an important point. Sacrificing on your reputation for the sake of a few more initial views of your content is not smart. I’m not just talking about obvious clickbait titles, like, “How to make $1,000,000 in 5 minutes.” No one really believes that there’s an article that can deliver an actionable, concrete way to make a million dollars in 5 minutes. No, I’m talking about more subtle tactics that even experienced copywriters use sometimes to generate reads. I know some big-name marketers do these, and I know some of these points are a little controversial, but in my opinion, these tactics are not worth it.

For example, here are a few headlines tactics I’d advise you to avoid:

For example, using a title like, “Regular exercise will destroy your body,” for an article that explains correct form when using exercise and how, if you consistently use poor form, you could “destroy your body.” Sure, the content you promised is in the article, but your headlines promised the exact opposite of what it delivered.

I see this from time to time with websites looking to get more sign ups to a specific course or resource. They’ll use a title promising a certain thing — say, “How to double your subscribers in 30 days” — write a whole article about the importance of subscribes and why you’d want to double them, and end off with, “So if you want to learn how to do all this, click the button below to join our course!” Nowhere in the article is the promise in the title delivered on. Again, avoid this.

This one’s less of a tactic I see used and more just a final point I want to make: you should avoid titles that sound like their clickbait, even if they aren’t. Say, for example, you actually could deliver on the promise of how to earn a million dollars in five minutes. I’d still advise using a title that doesn’t sound clickbait-y, for a simple reason: just because your clickbait-sounding title actually isn’t clickbait doesn’t mean anyone else will believe you. If it sounds like clickbait, that’s what people will think it is.

Next rule: if you want your headline to get reads, you need to be specific in what you’re promising. Titles like, “The best marketing advice you’ll hear today,” don’t tend to work so well because they’re far too vague. What is your content about? What will your reader gain from it? Without revealing those questions, your reader can’t decide if it’s worth their time — and will therefore choose to consume other types of content that do answer those questions.

While not all titles need to specify what the content is about, they do need to specify what your reader will receive from them. For example, “How this simple marketing tactic tripled my earnings.” That works, because while the headline opts for a little suspense as to what the tactic is, it’s very specific as to what it’s promising you.

The general rule of thumb here is: the more specific, the better. If you’re writing about how to make money blogging through advertising, “How to make money blogging through advertising,” or something along those lines is a far better title than simply, “How to make money blogging,” because by narrowing down your focus, you have a far more targeted pitch. And if you are writing about all the ways to make money blogging, try, “Everything you need to know about how to monetize your blog,” over, “How to monetize your blog,” because, again, “Everything there is to know” is a more targeted pitch than just, “Things to know.”

In short: there is a lot of content out there, so the more specific you are, the more you’re able to pinpoint how you stand out.

The next two rules center around the same idea: there is no cookie-cutter headline. Sure, all headlines should promise something specific, and as we’re gonna get into later, there are certain words and phrases that have been shown to be more successful than others — but if you want your headline to be successful, you have to realize that headlines are not just formulas with blank spaces to fill in.

They change depending on your audience.

Say you’re writing about an at-home workout. With the cookie cutter approach, you take a standard headline formula and apply it to your content — how to workout at home, the best way to workout at home, x tips on how to workout from home, blah blah blah. There’s nothing there that stands out from the crowd, and it’s not because your content is bad.

It’s because you’re not bothering to get to know your audience.

Why do they want to workout from home? What’s holding them back from working out at home? What is the burning problem they need you to solve?

With information like that, you can turn bland, generic headlines into ones that grab attention — by speaking the words your audience is waiting to hear.

As an example, I once got an email from Mark Schaefer titled: : New Research Answers: Is Content Marketing Sustainable? I remember being pretty busy at the time, but I still stopped what I was doing and read the article from beginning and end. Content marketing is what I do, you see. If it’s not sustainable, I’m out of a job.

That’s a headline written by people who know their audience. Because that’s the thing about headlines. Don’t try to be mildly interesting to everyone.

Be absolutely irresistible to your target audience.

And just like you need to know your audience, you need to know your platform. The type of headlines that work in one place might not necessarily work somewhere else. The type of headlines you’d use for YouTube, for example, are not necessarily the type you’d use for your blog.

So take the time to research what headlines do well on different platforms. More than that: understand why those headlines do well where they do so. Platforms like YouTube and Vimeo are visual platforms; your headline should pair well your thumbnail. Platforms like Medium are writing-heavy, and while the featured image is important, it rarely has any impact on the headline.

So you’re promising something. Something specific. Something that you know speaks to your target audience. But if you want to really stand out from the crowd, you have to go the extra mile.

You have to use tried and tested copywriting tactics to lend your headline an air of urgency.

Don’t offer a guide. Offer the ultimate guide. Don’t offer tips. Offer tips that get results. Get into the mind of your reader and ask yourself what would stop you more: someone offering 6 rules for writing headlines, or someone offering the 6 rules for writing headlines that get reads? (Wink, wink, he says in a dry tone.)

Of course, don’t just ask yourself. Countless harder-working copywriters and marketers than me have given us the data on the most successful words and phrases to use in a headline.

Check them out here.

Further reading: https://buzzsumo.com/blog/most-shared-headlines-study/

As you wish:

Successful headlines promise something

The best headlines stand out by promising something unique and focused on their reader

Avoid promising things that you can’t deliver

Likewise, avoid misrepresenting your content

The best headlines are specific

Tailor your headline by understanding your target audience and platform

Use tried and proven words and phrases for success