How To Write Killer Headlines Without Getting Arrested!

By on 02/5/2014


I was coming back from snowboarding the other day in a crowded airport.  I was deep in a conversation with my 8 year old daughter when she asked if I saw how fast she was going down one of the hills we spent a lot of time on.  I got a little excited and blurted out, “Your going to get arrested because you were killing it out there!”

I stopped and looked around and noticed there were several people looking at us like we had 2 heads.  I realized something at that moment.  If you can grab attention with the headline alone, your battle is half won.  A recent quote from SearchEngineWatch laid out a nice quote from David Ogilvy:

The father of advertising, David Ogilvy, said that “On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.”

My Content Is Awesome, The Headline Doesn’t Matter!

There is so much content out right now, you only have a few seconds to decide to keep reading. Every line of content has a purpose, and that purpose is to keep you hanging on until what?  That’s right, the next line.  And where does that all start?  With capturing a readers attention with the headline.  Users scan content, you might not even see this line because you’re scanning right over it. STOP and read it already!

How To Cheat And Not Get Caught!

Sounds like something you would hear in a Cosmo magazine huh?  Well, it is!  Just because a headline is used in one instance, doesn’t mean it can’t be used in a different scenario.  It’s not really cheating, it’s called inspiration.  Look through a Mens Health magazine, or even better yet, one of those cheesy magazines in the checkout isle at the grocery store.  Those guys put a lot of thought into headlines.  Get your inspiration, build your headline and write your supporting story.

Write killer headlines

How I Created A “How To” Post That Went Viral.

“How to” post are popular, SEO friendly and very popular.  Would you like to make your “how to” post seem a little different? Here is an idea you can try for your next one, drop the “to.”  Here are some examples of what I mean.

  • How I Increased Website Traffic by 200%
  • How a Responsive Website Drove 200 New Leads This Month
  • How My Subject Line Increased The Rate Of Opens On My Last Email

Those are pretty interesting right?  Much better than someone telling me “how to.”  These subject lines seem like they are introducing compelling content that is guaranteed to work.

Why Everyone Can’t Write Killer Headlines!

Some people can’t think along the lines of controversial, and you have to be a little controversial to be interesting.  Lets play a little game and see how interesting you can be.  Leave me your best controversial or killer headline in the comments below.  Leave your twitter handle with the comment and I’ll tweet it and see how many clicks you get on your killer headline. I’ll write the winners headline for my next blog post.

Let’s get some really good ones, so tweet this out.  

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