How to write Catchy Blog Titles and Increase your Readers:
Great content is always a winner online, something highly educational, news of the moment, viral content and videos can all claim you high levels of traffic, but we must first think about how to grab the attention of the reader and that is usually by the title of what you share.
I would say that a title (and at times the blog image) is what will sell your content, ie gain the attention of a potential reader and commit them to at least clicking that link to read more. We need to ask ourselves about what titles are the best, how many words, what words not to use, do I include the likes of !?#()” and do numbers / figures attract people’s attention?
Most people will generally think about what the content should be when it comes to blog writing, I find myself doing opposite and as silly as it sounds, if I capture a great image on my phone I am sometimes lead to create a new blog piece around it as I believe the image itself speaks a thousand words and is catchy enough to entice readers attention – I will also see a headline somewhere of think of one in my mind that sounds powerful and once again the blog I write will evolve round it.
As I write in different industry sectors and have to be bold and yet delicate around many different topics, I believe that I have a good understanding of they type of words in titles that work best compared to those less effective. Below are some ideas for you to take that I feel will enhance your chances of getting more readers checking your content:
- Be in time. The chances are that each and every day there will be a leading news story within your industry sector and one that is really grabbing people’s attention and their opinions are being shared across the internet from forums to social media – Make sure that you are up to date with these stories and that your new blog piece it quickly written and circles round the new topic in question.
- Be specific and accurate. Pick out the key words that will attract people to your blog and will likely be ones that are searched for, ie if you are writing about the falling house prices in your neighbour within London, then ‘Falling’ ‘London’ ‘House’ ‘Prices’ is what you initially need to have as the main key words for your title.
- Be daring. Now that you have you ‘Falling London House Prices‘ in mind as key words, add to it either that sexy edge, even use strong and powerful descriptive terms or attention jerking claims so we get to the likes of ‘Falling House Prices in London means 5 million in Negative Equity‘ or ‘I’ve lost £1 million thanks to London’s Falling House Prices‘.
- Be punchy. What I mean by this is that you should be telling people that your blog is worthwhile their reading time, so instead of ‘Social Media tips for Estate Agents‘ we should try and use ‘These 10 Social Media tips earn the most Revenue for Estate Agents‘ or ‘3 Social Media tips that are Guaranteed to Sell your House Faster’.
- Use numbers and symbols. Sometimes numbers and even symbols can really make an impact on the title of a blog. As customers to high street shops we all love sales signs in windows, but bigger impact is made when we see the likes of 80% off or Buy 1 get 2 Free. When writing a blog try to use numbers is they are really attention grabbing ie ‘Lots of Estate Agents are selling more property with this unique tool‘ will be more attention grabbing with ‘80% of Estate Agents say this new tool sells them more property‘ or we can shorten things down further still via ‘Magic tool 80% of Estate Agents swear by‘.
- Images. Yes, without question, an image really can grab someones attention so make sure you select something unique, eye catching, loud and colourful and try not to use too often free images online as it is likely they will have been used elsewhere for other blogs and users online will just see a repeated image that does not fuel them with excitement.
It is important that a great title leads most of your content online from your blogs to social media posts, from title of images to the title of the email marketing campaign you are about to send – A few minutes research and time spend on your title could increase the readers you are likely to receive.