At any moment of time tens of thousands of online visitors are scanning search engine return pages, social media blasts, and on-page content for information useful to their needs. They are quickly scanning content titles, and in doing so, making snap decisions to read or not read found content.
Will your blog content be read? Perhaps.
Capture the Reader’s Attention
No matter how useful, insightful, or valuable your blog content may be, there’s a chance it won’t be read. Without an enticing title driving click-through to your content, readership of your blog hangs in the balance.
Create A Call to Action
A blog title must entice the reader to continue into the body of blog. It is in essence, a call to action. Blog titles should promise a reward for reading the content of your blog. The reward may be enlightenment and enrichment. A blog can explain processes, answers questions, provides solutions, improves outcomes, and may even entertain along the way. Five very effective strategies for creating enticing blog titles are as follows.
- Ask a question: Ask a question about a pain point that your reader may be experiencing. Need relief from rising commercial casualty insurance premiums? This blog title will resonate with business owners seeking to cap casualty insurance costs. Those facing this challenge will read the rest of the blog.
- How To: The how to is powerful blog titling strategy. Blogs explaining how to complete a task, achieve better performance, or resolve a challenging issue are valuable to readers needing to learn how these activities are done. How to Manage Workplace Conflict and Surviving an IRS Audit are two compelling How-to Titles.
- Reveal a Secret: People by nature like to learn secrets that are generally protected or not easily accessed. Secrets of good health, happiness, productivity, personal achievement, and wealth and more are pitched and sought in every media channel known to mankind. It’s a strong driver for clicking through to the body of a blog.
- Wealth Secrets of the Rich
- Productivity Secrets of Super Achievers
- Nutritional Supplements: The Secret to Long Life
- Pique Curiosity: Blog titles can suggest there may be an information gap between what readers currently know and what they need to know. The Number One Overlooked Factor Impacting IT Budgets blog title suggests to the reader to examine the possibility that they may not know what that factor is. Similarly a blog title posing the question, “Are your HAZMAT shipping labels compliant with Federal Regulation CFR 49 Parts 171-180 ?” also implies a possible information gap. In both examples readers involved with these activities will likely read on further.
- List Posts: Offering a list of tips, solutions, methods, or benefits in a title is a tried and true way for getting viewers to click on to your title link. Bulleted lists allows quick assessment of the usefulness and value of the promised content. Readers clicking on a blog titled “Five Health Tips that May Add 10 Years On to your Life”, will see five bullets points and quickly grasp the key concepts and ascertain the information value.
- Quit Smoking – the value being…
- Briskly Walk for 30 Minutes a day – the value being…
- Reduce Daily Caloric Intake by 30 Percent – the value being…
- Drink 5 8-Ounce Glasses of Water a Day – the value being…
- Take a Daily Multivitamin – the value being…
The path to your prospect becomes more science and less luck using enticing call to action blog title strategies. It’s the quickest path to common ground with a prospect found among the billions of internet searches conducted on a daily basis.