On average, 80% of the people you reach with your content will read the headline, but only 20% will actually read the content itself. Learn how to write headlines that will drive traffic to your site.

1. 10 Steps to Creating Awesome
Headlines that Generate Clicks and
Shares
Small Business Online Marketing Tips By

2. In content marketing and social
media, your headline is what will
decide if your content spreads.
Whether people click on your links and visit
your content depends on your headlines – for
the simple reason that your headline is often
the only piece of your content that people
see before they decide to click or not.
You can invest all your money in your content
– if your headlines suck, so will your social
media and content marketing results.

3. 1. Why are headlines so important?
On average 80% of the people you reach with your
content will read the headline, but only 20% will
actually read the content itself.
Still many content creators invest a ton of time
and sometimes money in creating the content and
then use the first headline that comes to mind
without giving it much thought.

4. 1. Why are headlines so important?
Did you know that often it
is not the quality of your
content that decides on
how much traffic your
content gets? Many times it
is the headline that makes
a piece of content spread –
or die a quick death.
That is a mistake! What good will the best
content do you if your headline does not do the
job of getting people actually to view the
content?

5. 2. What does a good headline do?
The question of the perfect headline is a
complex one.
The reaction of people to a headline varies.
Some headlines will get you shares, and
some will get you clicks – and some will do
both.
Not always is the headline that gets you
clicks the one that gets you the most shares.

6. 2. What does a good headline do?
Upworthy, one of t he
(clickbait) websites whose
business model is based on
at least some of their posts
going viral (or close to
viral), nailed down what a
good headline needs to
achieve: shares AND
clicks.
Only then does your content (or headline) have any chance of
spreading (or going viral).

7. 3. How good are your headlines?
Do you know how well your own headlines perform
in social media? No? On your way to your perfect
headline, you need to test it!
For Twitter, you can do that by using the scheduling
tool Buffer – or rather their analytics.
Simply tweet the same link with two different
headlines (or tweet-texts in this case) via Buffer
(Buffer’s free account will do for this).
Set the tweets roughly one hour apart at a time
when a larger part of your audience should be
online and active.

8. 3. How good are your headlines?

9. 3. How good are your headlines?
Check the analytics:
Did you get any shares or clicks?
Did one of the two tweet-texts get
considerably more retweets or clicks?
Another way of testing different headlines is
to share them with campaign links, where you
treat each headline as a campaign and
monitor how each campaign is running.
You can read more about campaign links here.

10. 4. Some types of headlines that
always work well
Now, where should you start
to create better headlines?
First of all, you need to know
that some types of headlines
almost always work well.
And you probably have seen
hundreds or thousands of
them on your social channels.

11. 4. Some types of headlines that
always work well
Great headlines for clicks and shares are:
• List posts – Example: 50 Ways To Boost Your Blog Traffic
• How-To posts – Example: How To Drive More Traffic To Your Blog
• Fulfill your dreams posts – 10 Ways To Make Money From your
Blog
• Best or worst Posts – The 17 Worst Social Media Tips I Ever Got
• Predictions and trend posts – Social Media trends you need to
know for 2016. If you visit your Twitter account, I am sure you
will find variations of these types of headlines all over your feed.
The reasons for that is simple: These headlines work!But there is
more about creating the perfect headline. There are elements
we have not talked about yet, and still these elements are very
powerful for headlines.

12. 5. Powerwords
Even if your headline is almost ready, you may
have decided on going for one of the headline
types that usually work well; you should keep
some more aspects in mind.
There are powerful elements that you can
easily add to almost any headline.
And sometimes it is just one work or a simple
phrase that will make all the difference.

13. 5. Powerwords

14. 5. Powerwords
A single word can turn your headline from
boring to standing out.
A powerful phrase can inspire curiosity and
surprise.
There are words that have already proven
their power in viral headlines.
Simply taking a look will give at the most
common words and phrases in some of the
most viral headlines will give you an idea
which words may do the trick.

15. 6. The Power of Curiosity
A surefire way of making people click on your
headline is to make them curious.
Claim you are giving them something they
really NEED to know – do not forget to
deliver in the content itself.
The secret to a good headline is often that it
hints at something incredibly interesting, but
does not tell what it actually is.
Do not give everything away in the headline,
why should people click if you do?
Upworthy does this to perfection.

16. 7. The power of numbers
Numbers are brain
candy.
People love numbers.
In a social media world
of unproven claims and
vague promises,
numbers seemingly
provide some facts and
figures that people can
easily grasp and trust.

17. 8. Why your Headline should be
short
Most people get to see hundreds of
headlines every day: On Facebook, Twitter,
online magazines, mobile phones,
newsstands and much more.
We simply cannot actually read every
headline we see – so we’d rather skim
them.

18. 8. Why your Headline should be
short
On average, a reader
reads the first three
and the last three
word of a headline.
If your headline
length is close to 6
words, you actually
stand a chance of
your audience
reading the complete
headline.

19. 9. A proven process to create great
headlines
How do others always come up with these
great headlines?
Well, truth be told, no-one ALWAYS has the
best-running headlines.
But there are some processes that you can
use to help you find outstanding headlines
Often when choosing a headline, we simply
take what comes to our mind first.
Even if we play around with different
headlines: Most of the time, these all follow
the same line of thinking.

20. 9. A proven process to create great
headlines
Upworthy makes sure it is different.
They create a large variety of headlines for
each post (start with 25).
If you have to create 25 headlines, you
cannot stick with variations of one and the
same headline.
You have to do some new and creative
thinking.
Otherwise, you will not be able to come up
with more than 10.

21. Choose the best 5 from your 25
ideas and start your testing.

22. 10. Use some Tools
You think you have found your perfect
headline?
Let’s see what a headline analyzer
like CoSchedule Headline Analyzer tells you
about how good your headline actually is.

23. 10. Use some Tools
These headline analyzers know a lot of the things I
told you in this post: they know about the power
of numbers and that list posts often work well.
They know the power of a single word.
And they know the optimal length of a headline
What they do not fully get, are the emotions and
special requirements of your audience.
So, before you ditch your perfect headline because
CoSchedule tells you so, you may want to try your
headline with your audience.

24. Of course, every audience and
every niche are different
You have to take into account, who you are creating
your content for.
But if you put at least some of the above tips into
your headlines in the future, I am sure you will see
more traffic to your content.
And the whole process of creating headlines will get
easier as you learn more about the preferences of
your audience.

25. Read the entire blog post on our
website:
http://www.bloominari.com/blo
g/headlines-to-generate-clicks-
shares
This blog post was written for Bloominari by a
prestigious guest blogger: Susanna Gebauer.
Read her full byline in the original post on our
blog.

26. Thank You
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