What You Need to Know About the Most Engaging Headlines on Facebook
And the most common word found in the most shared headlines, drum roll, please!
I write my headlines first before I decide to write the article. It sets the tone of the story. I would run my titles using free headline analyzers. But to be honest, I don’t give much attention to my titles until I was shocked to read what every writer needs to know about writing engaging headlines.
A headline isn’t just an article title. It’s a tiny window of opportunity to connect with your audience. — Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo’s Top 5 insights:
1. Instructional headlines drove the most Facebook engagement.
2. Curiosity headline phrases — i.e., those that hinted, teased, or questioned something — tended to fare a lot better on Twitter.
3.The top headline phrase on Facebook had 590x more average shares than the top headline phrase on Twitter.
4.The ideal headline length is 11 words and 65 characters, according to the most shared headlines on both Facebook & Twitter.
5.The top Facebook headlines are no longer published by low-quality entertainment publications but instead by authoritative news sites.
After reading this comprehensive report by Buzzumo, where they have looked at 100 million headlines across Facebook and Twitter, they have discovered that what worked in 2017 stopped working today.
The data set they used shows that emotional and clickbait headlines are resting in these social media platforms’ graveyard.
You can listen to the audio of the report on Youtube.
Emotional headlines had their heyday, but you may still get away with a headline with exaggerated phrases like, “one of the most beautiful.”
In 2017, BuzzSumo co-founder Steve Rayson described this trigram as a form of “emotional content, with often an explicit promise of exceptional content.” — Buzzsumo.
Other types of headlines that no longer get shared on social media are as follows:
- Quizzes — Can We Guess Your Real Age?
- Tribal — 17 Things Only Moms of Twins Understand
- Clickbait — You won’t believe
Facebook will be prioritizing news from trustworthy sources, news that is informative, and news that is relevant to one’s local community.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, “news will always be a critical way for people to start conversations on important topics — Buffer.
A Simple Checklist to Writing the Best Headlines for Your Blog Posts
I recently came across an article that discusses the importance of headlines. And if you’ve ever tried to write good ones, you know how hard it is. Check out this link: 5-Point Checklist for Writing Headlines.
Writing a great headline requires more than just the knowledge of how to structure a sentence. The best headlines are so compelling that they make people stop scrolling or clicking. They’re captivating and memorable. They pique your curiosity and make you want to find out more.
The headline, the first thing people will ever read about a piece of content, is what will draw them in or chase them away. It’s the most critical element of any article, and it should be treated as such.
The headline is your first and strongest impression — the one thing that can really make a difference in your content’s success.
2 Things to remember when writing your headline
- Trigrams — A group of three consecutive written units such as letters, syllables, or words. In headlines, it can be a phrase, and one of the most engaging phrases used in headlines that were shared on Facebook is “of the year.” In 2019, Time’s headline “Greta Thunberg: TIME’s Person of the Year 2019” has 2.1M shares. On trigrams, the reason it works well as part of the headline is it employs The rule of three, which, according to Wikipedia, is a writing principle that suggests that a trio of events or characters is more humorous, satisfying, or effective than other numbers.
- Brevity: Headlines engaging and shared across social media platforms are down to 11 words and 65 characters. (Headlines are snappier these days).
The top themes in the best Facebook headlines
Other Takeaways from the Buzzsumo report
Instructional headlines drive Facebook engagement — While rankings and newness topped the charts, instructional headlines stole the show.
Listicles are still getting engagement from readers — The thing that jumps out straight away is the number of headlines beginning with a number — or “listicles” as they’re more commonly known. Six out of twenty phrases start with a number, and three more also feature a number.
Numbers promise the reader information and actionable takeaways. According to Brian Dean, they’re also a great way to make headlines more specific and, therefore, clickable (Founder, Backlinko).
And the most common word found in the most shared headlines, drum roll, please!
“The” — Coming in at #1
Imagine, most of us have what I call “headline paralysis” when the most commonly used word from the most shared articles on Facebook starts with the humble “the.”
Final thoughts
When writing a headline, the most important thing to remember is grabbing the reader’s attention. There are many different types of headlines that can be used depending on the article you are writing.
The headline is far more important than the article. It is what will determine if your article will be read or not by people.
Algorithms decide who gets to see our articles on social media. The competition for attention is intense and comes from different sources, from Youtube videos, podcasts on Spotify, and TikTok.
While content is consumed at a pace never before seen in any time of our history as digital consumers, our audiences come with exceedingly high standards.
As writers, our task is to deliver engaging content, and it starts with a headline that resonates with the audience.
What constitutes a “good” headline? What is the one thing that you need to remember in writing headlines?
Focus on one thing. Grab attention. Get views. Get an audience.
