Classic But Boring Titles Rewritten for Stunning Online Results?

How has it come to this?

I read an excellent article recently by the lovely and talented Hogan Torah titled “No One Will Read Your Story If The Title Sucks.” It’s a great read, in which he advocates the use of the Sharethrough Headline Analyzer to improve your story titles. It will give your title a score from 0 to 100, with the highest number possible obviously being the goal; you want to aim for a 70 or higher. I use both that one and Headline Studio because they are free and I’m cheap.

This talk of titles got me to thinking about classic titles from books, music, and movies and wondering how they would fare in our brave new online world. Sure, Dickens was a badass, but could his titles hang with the starving tech blogger trying frantically to reach 100 followers before Ev casts him into the outer darkness, where there will be wailing, gnashing of teeth, and no MPP coin? Apparently not.

To demonstrate just how weak so many supposed “classics” are, I have run the following ten through Headline Studio and then rewritten them to better reflect what we all want in our titles/headlines today (at least according to the Almighty Algorithm). The scores for each are posted in parentheses. Also, just in case you’re curious, the title of this article has a question mark it does not need because it raised the score a full seven points (from 72 to 79), and the image has nothing to do with the article but is colorful and eye catching. Now on with the show.

1. The Godfather (27): “How to Make Your Customers an Offer They Absolutely Cannot Refuse in Ten Easy Steps” (77)

2. Moby Dick (30): “Swim with the Whales in the Beautiful South Pacific for $10 a Day” (84)

3. Lawrence of Arabia (36): “Why Living Like a Local is the Only Way to Travel” (71)

4. Friday the 13th (38): “Camp Crystal Lake Has All the Summer Fun Your Restless Teen Craves” (78)

5. Black Widow (27): “Disney: Being a Bunch of Greedy, Misogynistic Fucktards Since 1923” (72)

This is starting to depress me. Why the hell did I do this?

6. Grease (27): “If Your Punk Boyfriend Has a Flying Car, You Might Actually Have Drowned” (73)

7. Born to Run (33): “How to Talk Confidently About Cars Without Ever Having a Drivers’ License” (78)

8. Pride and Prejudice (41): “Dump Him, Girl: Five Signs Your Relationship Is Hopelessly Toxic” (82)

9. Groundhog Day (35): “Stop Worrying About the Future and Live Your Best Life Now” (74)

10. Oliver Twist (31): “The Simple Method I Used To Drop 15 Pounds with the Gruel-Only Diet” (84)

Finally, because I clearly have given up on life entirely, I decided to run my own name through the analyzer. The results were not a surprise:

Paul Combs (30): “That Grumpy Old Bastard Who Won’t Shut Up About Springsteen” (71)

At least now I understand why my stats are down.