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Why Your Blog Post Needs More Than One Headline

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Want to write a headline that capture readers’ attention and gets them to click through to your article?

You’ll need more than one headline.

That’s because readers on different platforms are looking for different things.

The headline that attracts a reader searching for a topic in Google isn’t the same one that’ll appeal to someone scrolling on Facebook—and neither is a good fit for a loyal reader who visits your website or subscribes to your newsletter.

To make the most of every promotional platform, write a headline tailored to each.

 

4 Headlines Your Blog Post Needs

Write a headline that will attract readers to your post from any platform you’ll share it on, including

  • Your website: What will entice readers who visit your home page to click into the article?
  • Social media: How will you catch readers’ attention as they scroll through myriad distractions?
  • Search: Which keywords and information will you include in the title tag to get clicks from Google search results?
  • Email: What about the post is most attractive to your most loyal readers?

 

Tools to Publish Multiple Headlines

Your CMS lets you publish the headline that’ll show up at the top of a blog post and anywhere else the post appears on your website (like in a “latest posts” section on the home page).

Use these tools to publish the right headline to each of the other platforms where you’ll promote a post:

  • Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress: Write a keyword-targeted title tag that’ll appear in search results, but not on your website.
  • Buffer or Hootsuite: These social media schedulers let you rewrite the headline that shows up in the preview of your post when you share it on social media.
  • Mailchimp: Use this or another feature-rich email marketing platform to easily build emails that include custom images, headlines, and snippets for blog posts you want to promote.

 

 

Dana Sitar has been writing and editing for digital media since 2011, most recently as a copy editor for fintech and personal finance. She trains journalists, writers, and editors on writing for the web through sessions at the annual ACES editors’ conference, Utah Valley University, online courses, and private trainings. Dana has written about work and writing in digital media for publications including the New York Times, HuffPost, a column for Inc. Magazine, and dozens of writing and content marketing blogs. As a branded content editor for The Penny Hoarder, Dana managed a team of writers, editors, and social media experts to create multimedia branded content to help advertisers reach an audience of 12 million across platforms including social media, email, blog, and video.

 

 

5 Characteristics of an Effective, Catchy Blog Post Title

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A blog post’s title has an important job: to get someone to read the post.

It holds that huge responsibility on the shoulders of about 60 to 70 characters—not a lot. That means you have to get creative to make sure every word, letter, space, and punctuation mark in your headline is totally necessary and carries its fair weight.

What makes a good blog headline depends largely on the context where a reader sees it—as they scroll through social media, search on Google, browse your email newsletter, or peruse your website, for example.

But some characteristics of good titles apply across platforms.

Regardless of the platform where you promote a blog post, the title should:

  1. Be eye-catching: Your first hurdle is to catch a potential reader’s attention on the platform where you promote a blog post. Your article title competes with everything else the reader will encounter on the platform, so it has to stand out—what we call a “thumb stopper.”
  2. Make a promise: What will a reader get out of reading your post? The title should tell them not just what you know a post is about but exactly how it’ll serve them.
  3. Leave a curiosity gap: Now you have to get a click. If your headline gives away—or appears to give away—the main points of your post, readers have no reason to click through and learn more. Make the promise clear enough to pique interest, but leave enough questions in the reader’s head to get them to read more.
  4. Be honest: Whatever promises you make and questions you raise in the headline, you must follow through in the blog post. Don’t be salacious just to get a click; it’ll cost you trust with the reader.
  5. Encompass the post: Consider your blog post a hierarchy with the title at the top—it should be a comprehensive explanation of the post. If the title only teases a single detail from the post, you’ll likely exclude some readers and disappoint others.

 

Dana Sitar has been writing and editing for digital media since 2011, most recently as a copy editor for fintech and personal finance. She trains journalists, writers, and editors on writing for the web through sessions at the annual ACES editors’ conference, Utah Valley University, online courses, and private trainings. Dana has written about work and writing in digital media for publications including the New York Times, HuffPost, a column for Inc. Magazine, and dozens of writing and content marketing blogs. As a branded content editor for The Penny Hoarder, Dana managed a team of writers, editors, and social media experts to create multimedia branded content to help advertisers reach an audience of 12 million across platforms including social media, email, blog, and video.

What You Need To Know To Write Effective Headlines for 4 Major Platforms

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Unless you write for an authoritative news site or have a rabid audience, you likely rely on external platforms to attract readers to your blog posts.

Whether readers click through to your site and how they perceive your post when they get to it, both depend on the context of that platform where they first discovered it.

  • What mindset were they in on the platform?
  • Why did they approach the platform in the first place?
  • What else did they encounter on the platform before finding your post?

Consider the common platforms and their context and headlines readers will encounter first on those external platforms as you write blog posts.

  1. Social media: Probably the first we think of when we consider platforms for blog post promotion. Social media includes sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (Stories), and Pinterest. Readers here are easily distracted and encounter a wide variety of content. They aren’t thinking about your site or the topic of your blog post before seeing your headline.
  2. Search: Search engine optimization (SEO) is a popular way to craft blog posts that show up in Google search results and attract new readers. Readers here enter a query into the search engine and choose your blog post from among up to 10 related results. They approach the search with a specific question or topic in mind. If your headline promises a good answer and the blog post follows through, they’ll likely be highly engaged with your content.
  3. Email: Readers who subscribe to your blog or email newsletter want to see your latest content, so they’re highly engaged and loyal. Your subject line gets them to open the email, and your headlines within the email should entice them to click through to read the articles in full.
  4. Your home page: Readers who visit your website looking for something to read are extremely loyal. But you still have to catch their attention and get them to click on the content! Understand your core audience and what they most want from you, and use your home page content and blog post headlines to demonstrate that you can deliver.

 

Dana Sitar has been writing and editing for digital media since 2011, most recently as a copy editor for fintech and personal finance. She trains journalists, writers, and editors on writing for the web through sessions at the annual ACES editors’ conference, Utah Valley University, online courses, and private trainings. Dana has written about work and writing in digital media for publications including the New York Times, HuffPost, a column for Inc. Magazine, and dozens of writing and content marketing blogs. As a branded content editor for The Penny Hoarder, Dana managed a team of writers, editors, and social media experts to create multimedia branded content to help advertisers reach an audience of 12 million across platforms including social media, email, blog, and video.

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