headline creation Archives -

What Happens When You Write 25 Headlines Before Choosing One?

Having patience is important when writing headlines. Like other tasks, if you set aside a block of time to write headlines, it will greatly help you to stay focused on your writing and producing blog posts regularly. My friend Randy Clark sets aside regular blocks of time to blog, and that includes writing headlines. In fact, he wrote a book about blogging that you might like: How to Stay Ahead of Your Business Blog Forever.

Writing 25 Headlines

First of all, how do you write so many headlines? When I write headlines, I write them very quickly, without a lot of deep thinking. That is, without overthinking. I run them through CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer and make sure they’re the right length. More importantly, they need a balance of emotional words, power words, common words, and uncommon words. And I want to get a high enough score. For instance, this particular headline got a 76, which isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good.

Do You Need to Put So Much Effort into a Headline?

Well, yes, you do. Because a lot of people will read the headline without ever reading the article. The headline might get them to read the article. Maybe or maybe not. In any event, writing headlines is indeed a pain in the asterisk, as I’ve outlined before in Headline Writing: Ten Reasons It’s a Pain in the Asterisk!

Using Keywords

One thing about creating headlines is that it’s important to put your important keywords first. So in that last headline in the paragraph above, the words Headline Writing need to be first if those are the keywords.

Need Help with Your Blog Writing?

If you’ve fallen behind (and can’t get up!), I’d love to help you. Contact me and we’ll see what kinds of headlines we can create.

How to Keep Your Content Fresh: Innovative Ways

Perhaps you’ve been creating content for months or years now, and you feel as though you’re repeating the same tired ideas over and over. Is that you? Some days it’s me! Sitting down to write isn’t always fun. The imagination doesn’t always cooperate the way it should! Especially if you’ve been in meetings all day long, and the thought of writing sounds way less interesting than sleep.

Photo by NancyK!

Repurpose

Take a look at your own content. Is there something from a blog post that you wrote long ago that you could revisit? That’s one way of repurposing. Start with that old idea, and do a remodeling job. You can add video, images, tweets, or quotations to make it fresh. Think of it as a makeover. You might get some clues here: How to Recycle Content the 10 Best Ways.

Add a New Headline

Of course, you’ll want to create a new headline, too. In fact, many experts claim you should spend half your time on the headline itself. Here’s a thorough article about Headlines: How to Write Better Headlines, from Hubspot. The infographic is worth its weight in gold.

Combine Two or Three Ideas

One thing that I love love love doing is to combine two radically different ideas to create a new one. So, for instance, What Nikola Tesla Said About the New iPhone Will Blow Your Mind combines a dead scientist with the new iPhone. I’m fairly certain no one has written that particular article before! Call it a long, long, long tail keyword.

Interview an Influencer in Your Space

You could interview someone and ask them how they got started, what differentiates their business from other businesses, what makes them successful, etc. The interview doesn’t have to be done in person–a phone interview might be adequate, as outlined in How to interview someone like a journalist. Another good tip? Avoid the word interview, as it brings up visions of job interviews–which hardly anyone enjoys.

Let Others Do the Work ~ Crowdsource

Sometimes you can crowdsource during a Twitter chat and then include the tweets in a blog post. Or just take a tweet and use it on another social media platform to start a conversation. It doesn’t have to be anything controversial to start a conversation, either.

More Next Time!

There’s a lot to say about content creation and keeping it fresh. If there’s something you’d like to see, drop me a comment here! And thank you.