A headline really is like a promise. It’s a promise that when you read this first headline, whatever it says, there’s going to be more information below that’s going to answer this thing that we talked about in our headline.
There are some different ways to do headlines. The three main types are social proof or piggyback, a threat, or a gain headline. We’re going to talk about each of these individual.
So, when it comes to social proof or a piggyback headline, here are some good examples. Why I use olive oil and you should too. So, immediately there’s a couple things being promised. Why this person is using it, and how it’s going to benefit me if I were to use olive oil as well.
What Dr. Oz eats for a midnight snack. Okay, we all know that it means he’s a healthy guy, talks about health related stuff, and we’re definitely struggling with being hungry and wanting some chocolate at midnight, and that’s a great promise using social proof or using somebody else as an example and an anchor to get somebody to read more of your article.
The new WordPress plug in everyone is using, even if this was the new whatever everyone is using, just the idea of oh, I didn’t know about that, or I’m gonna find out if I do know about that, and I’m gonna click and I’m gonna read that particular one.
Threat headlines, sorry I lied to you. That’s a great one. That’s a great subject headline for a newsletter. I did something similar to this once, and had a huge open rate on my newsletter that month because it immediately sparked people’s attention and made them, you know, what did Will do? How did he lie to me? It was nice and short, easy to write headline.
Is your child’s [inaudible 00:02:10] to their health? So now we’re poking at something that’s going to hurt you, obviously it’s a threat related headline. So, you know, if you’ve got a child then this is something you’re just going to read because of the way it’s written.
Seven incredible views of the Grand Canyon you won’t believe are real. So there is something to be said about some of these threat headlines, and that’s called click bait. Click bait was rampant a couple years ago, 2015, 2016 where things like this you won’t believe are real. You know, this kind of like a challenge inside of the headline itself. The problem with the click bait ones was it wasn’t answering the question. So you’d click on it, you’d read some stupid article, or it was just a bunch of ads and it wasn’t really what you expected.
So, you got to be a little careful with the threat headlines that people don’t [inaudible 00:03:10] on what you put in the headline.
Lastly are gain headlines. How I get my toddler to eat his spinach every time. Okay, so a mom is going to gain by reading this article because she’s gonna get her kiddo to start eating his spinach. Create a gorgeous holiday feast on $30. Okay, I’m gonna gain by not spending all my money and everybody’s still going to be impressed by my fantastic holiday feast. How to master You Are My Sunshine on guitar in five minutes. So, there’s a huge gain. I won’t have to spend a lot of time. I’ll be able to master the song in a short amount of time.
So, these are some different gain headlines that you could use, both when you’re writing newsletter subject lines or articles on your site.
