Content marketing tools and training.
Are you stressing over writing killer headlines?
Do you write your copy and then agonize, tweak, and rewrite the headline, only to rewrite it again?
Do you often go so far as to publish your article or sales page even though you’re still not sure the headline is the best it can be?
Well, you’re not alone. People who know how important headlines are often do overly dwell on them, and for good reason.
Writing a great headline means crafting an enticing invitation to a prospective reader. It’s not the whole story, nor is it an attempt to convince anyone to do anything other than to keep reading.
That being said, it seems you can’t move two pages on the web without tripping across a poorly-crafted headline. While many contain one or more necessary elements, other factors are often left out of the headline, diminishing the overall power and draw of this critical aspect of your copy.
As a geek I am a compulsive tester. I discovered how copywriting techniques really work from testing. One result that shocked me was that we can make our headlines too good. At times we write headlines that are so powerful they are ineffective.
How can this be? There is one simple concept here that can either work in your favor or devastate the results of your headline.
What do you think when you read headlines such as these?
Let’s take a break from the headline remixing, and look at some of the submissions that I thought worked “as is.” Often the key to great editing is knowing when to keep your hands off, despite the fact that we might have taken a different approach ourselves. Feel free to voice contrary opinions in the comments—I always love to hear suggestions on how to make any headline better.
Let’s start off with the strong headlines that I didn’t even try to rewrite. In fact, I suspect that in these five cases, Jim, John, Jim, Maki and that anonymous guy at Engtech fully knew their headlines rocked, and only wanted to hear us confirm it.
This is the second installment of the headline remix series. You submitted content, I’m rewriting select titles and telling you why.
If you missed Part One it’s here. Otherwise, let’s carry on, shall we?
