Blogging tips

These 5 Steps Are How I Levelled Up My Headlines

Better headlines to grab your readers

We all want to get eyes on our articles, and part of that means making sure that our headlines catch readers’ attention.

This is something I have been working on and learning from others on Medium.

Here are my best tips for you:

1. Keep a list of candidate headlines

When I was new on Medium, every headline I thought of became a draft. I just clicked on the ‘new article’ button and typed it in.

It was good motivation to write, sure, but it means that everything — good and bad — was sitting in my drafts file. Bugging me, until it I got around to developing the idea fully.

A much more efficient approach is to keep a separate list, perhaps in a journal or notes app, jotting down ideas for articles as soon as you think about them.

Then, when you can return and spend some time writing, you only need to pick the best ones.

2. Add more to the list of article ideas every day

Following from the previous point, you need to write a lot of headlines in order to get a few good ones.

As with anything, though, coming up with concepts for articles along with draft headlines is mainly a matter of practice. The more you do it, the more ideas are going to come easily to mind.

Humans are inherently creative.

However, if you are still struggling with new ideas, check out this article about boosting your creative thinking.

3. Refine each chosen headline at least two or three times.

My next rookie mistake was to stick with the first draft of my headlines. That’s crazy when I think about it now.

I wouldn’t write a poem, short story or novel without redrafting it. So why stick with ‘headline version 1’?

Instead, I recommend that once you have picked an idea to work on, take several attempts at making that headline better. Do so after drafting the article — by that point, you have a fuller idea of how the finished thing will look.

In your re-drafted title, try to include the following, as all of these things are good for SEO and reader engagement:

• Keywords that may be used as Google search terms.
• Power words such a “brilliant” “inspiring”, “ruined”, and “justified”.
• Terms that make the headline more personal, such as “you” or “our”.
• Something to drive curiosity, such as a pun or an unusual word.

4. Try to think about how a reader will feel when they see your title.

This is the hardest bit — putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. But it’s important.

People don’t like to read the same old things over and over. So have a think, as you work on the final touches to your article, about how you would feel if you came across a headline like that.

Would it make you want to click?

If not, perhaps there is something that you aren’t getting right. I’m not suggesting that headlines should be deliberately vague. But there does need to be something to draw the reader in.

Is the article useful, new, and different in some way? Does it reflect your expertise? Is it going to be funny and/or insightful?

This should come across!

5. Finally, make sure the headline is formatted correctly

A lot of publications will reject your article, at least initially, if the headline is not formatted in sentence case.

It doesn’t have to be a headache. This title case converter site will quickly and easily put your title in the right format.

And don’t forget to put your subtitle in sentence case, and to use the small ‘T’ icon to format it as a subhead.

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