What to Do When Your Headline Sucks
Don’t press “publish”. Take a deep breath. Rip it up. And try again.
Average isn’t acceptable
There is something I have noticed in common about my nearly forty articles on Medium so far:
The headlines.
They’re not bad, but they’re distinctly average.
Not the drop-dead killer headlines everyone hopes for.
My final straw was my last article published recently in ILLUMINATION:
I knew I wasn’t happy with the headline, but in the haste and joy of publication, I published it anyway.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a disastrous headline, nothing to be particularly ashamed of.
But it’s not a killer.
And that’s the danger.
We settle for passable headlines that are “okay” but which ultimately don’t sell your story as well as they could.
Clickbait
Part of my problem is, I think, that when I started on Medium I promised I would never resort to clickbait, so I always try to avoid sensationalist headlines. That is a good thing in many ways, but you can always take it too far.
In the attempt to avoid over-sensationalizing, you end up not sensationalizing at all.
There must be a happy medium.
Exercises for headlines
My coach, Ayodeji Awosika, recommends that every morning you should wake up and brainstorm ten headlines. If you do that, you might get one worth pursuing.
Well, I don’t do that every day without fail, and sometimes I only manage five headlines before running out of steam, but in future, I will try to do it every day regardless of whether it is a “writing day” or not.
I will even add refinement to Ayo’s scheme:
If you have a headline that you don’t like, write out five to ten alternative headlines for it before committing and see what you get.
Why headlines matter
Headlines are the first impression a reader gets of your writing. Worse than that, it’s all the reader has to go on before clicking on your story and reading further.
It doesn’t matter how brilliant your writing or interesting your subject matter is, if your headline doesn’t grab the reader, you won’t get read.
That’s too bad.
So in the future, I’ll try to avoid mediocrity in my headlines.
I won’t always succeed, but if my headline success improved by only 10%, that’s potentially 10% more reads in my stats.
What’s not to like…?
And maybe, just maybe, brilliant headlines might eventually flow naturally from my keyboard like butter from a hot bagel.
The proof will be in the pudding, so watch this space. (And yes, I know that by this self-challenge I’m making myself a hostage to fortune).
Takeaways
If you’re not completely happy with your headline, don’t publish it, but write out five to ten alternative headlines.
You can even experiment and play a game where you explore a few clickbait headlines to see what they’re like.
Your headline is the make-or-break moment for your article, in that it’s when a potential reader decides whether they’re going to read your story.
Don’t squander the moment.