How to stop your headline from killing your blog.

Does this sound familiar?

You've written an awesome blog on WA....full of laser sharp wit and great information...

You go to bed feeling ever so (slightly) smug because you know that all of the folks at WA are going to LOVE IT !!

Next morning, coffee in hand and full of eager anticipation, you log into the WA site and scan through the dashboard to find your masterpiece....you find it and your heart drops...because not one person has commented on your magnificent blog...

The disappointment is almost palpable....you sip your coffee in sad bewilderment....why did nobody like it?....what did I do wrong?

But think about this for a moment...what if your blog actually is brilliant, what if the reason that no one commented on it is that no one actually opened it up and read it?

With any form of writing...the first thing you have to do is convince your potential readers to actually take the time to open it, look at it, read the first line and then hopefully read onto the end.

David Ogilvy (Google him) said " On the average, five time as many people read the headline as read the body copy"

But a great headline will push up these averages.

This applies to marketing in all it's many forms...the aim of any marketing piece is to grab people's interest and get them to carry on reading.

So what components does a headline need in order to grab attention?

Many copywriters teach the "four U's" of headline writing...

your headline should be:-

• Unique
  
• Ultra-Specific
• have a sense of Urgency
• Useful

It's unlikely that you would be able to achieve all of these in a single headline. But if you can manage one of two then you will improve your attention grabbing kudos...

Let's look at these in a little more detail....

1) Unique....it stands to reason that if your headline is the same as many others it is going to be less well received. You have to remember that people these days see marketing messages everywhere...on the internet, on the TV, on their phones...

So you need to stand out in all of this "noise" to make yourself heard or seen. To give your customers a reason to buy from you rather then anyone else.

Be different,,,,be as unique as you are yourself. Let your personality shine through and make folks like you....people do business with people they like....

2) Ultra-Specific...Try to provide enough information so that the reader knows whether or not the offer that you are making will be of interest to them.

For example "Do you want to know how I can increase your customer base by building you a low-cost web-site?"

It's not snappy or funny....but it is conveying your message to the people who are most likely to want to see it (business owners)

3) Urgency...conveying a sense of urgency can be very effective but can't always be applied to your particular marketing campaign or article.

Example - "Are you losing customers because of a lack-lustre web presence?"

This could even be combined with the example from number 2. Not only does your potential customer need to talk to you about the web-site you can build for him...but he may actually be losing customers because of his "lack-lustre" web presence...he's losing customers right now!!

So the customer thinks....."I had better find out what this guy can do to stop me losing all those customers....help !!"

4) Useful....Probably the most important of the "rules" here. Your headline needs to convey the benefit or usefulness of what you are offering.The example in number 2 also conveys the benefit of reading the rest of the piece....the chance to find out how this reader could increase their customer base for a low-cost.

Please note that the examples I use above are designed to get you all thinking about the content of your headline and of the overall importance of headlines. On some platforms you will find that you have a limited number of characters and will have to create fairly short headlines (compared to some of my examples above)

You will need to work within the confines of whichever platform you are using.

Jove's comment in the section below has a link that may interest you as the article that it leads to talks about this issue.

Keep marketing

Kevin