The power of your headline
You may be the type of writer who whips off headline masterpieces every time you sit down to write or you may be the type of writer who has to write a draft and then chip away at that draft until it is perfect in your eyes. Either way, you will arrive at the same conclusion eventually.
Ironically, there are many people who painstakingly take at least as much time crafting their headline as they do writing the body of their content. Certainly, there is much more pressure surrounding the headline than many other parts of the content that you will sit down to write. The truth is that writing is no easy task. It takes time, effort, thought, and, more often than not, a lot of feelings to get it just right.
The purpose of your headline
Your headline is important for a variety of reasons. First of all, if you don't get the headline right, your target audience members will not go any further than reading your headline. You have three seconds to engage your readers and, let's be honest, three seconds is not a heck of a lot of time. If you are to succeed at engaging them, the only way that you can do that is with your headline. That means that you had better make it good (no pressure, of course)!
If you are questioning why the headline is so important, it is because it is the first thing that your target audience members see when they start reading what you have shared. Second of all, if your headline is doing the job that it is supposed to do, that means that it is capturing the essence of the content that you have posted. In those three seconds, you need to give the reader enough of an understanding of what you are expressing in your content to keep them engaged and, at the same time, to give them a clear understanding that you have the ability to solve whatever problem they are experiencing at the time.
It is important to remember here that if you don't capture the attention of your reader within those three seconds, they will walk away from your content and turn to someone else. That is the last thing that you want. If they do that, how are you possibly going to build a meaningful, enduring relationship with them?
Capturing the attention of your target audience
There are many different ways in which you can capture the attention of your target audience. Your headline should be compelling and it should be relevant to what they are doing and what they are experiencing. At the same time, it should be entertaining and meaningful. You may be asking yourself at this point how you can accomplish all of that with such a severe limitation of the amount of words that you can put into your headline.
Well, practice is definitely the answer to that one. The more you practice writing effective headlines, the better you will get at writing them. However, on the other hand, you shouldn't think that writing effective, a powerful headline is a piece of cake. It may take quite a bit of effort before you actually master writing headlines. Well, definitely don't give up easily. You must understand that if you keep at it, you will improve and you will eventually (sooner rather than later) accomplish your goals and achieve the results that you are hoping for.
Repeated success
The one thing that you don't want to happen is that you write one successful headline and then that is the end of it. You need to write consistently powerful, attention-grabbing, compelling headlines that hit the mark each and every time with your target audience.
If you are struggling with the angle that you feel you need for your headline (and the content that is married to that headline), you can become inspired by all sorts of people, places, and things. You may be surprised at how easy it is to get ideas from other people. You just need to make sure that you are actually listening to what they have to say. They will be more than happy (in most cases) to tell you what interests them. That works for a few reasons. One of them is the fact that you will fortify your relationship with the other person if they understand that their needs are important to you. Anyway, it isn't as though you are faking that one. You sincerely do care about satisfying their needs. If you can do that, your needs, in turn, will be satisfied as well.
Conclusion
Your headline holds a great deal of power and it will be the difference between the success and failure of your content (as well as your content marketing materials and strategy). There are those people who believe that it is reasonable to spend 50% of writing time on the body of the content and the other 50% on the headline. That is how critical the headline is perceived to be. The fact is that without a great headline, your content will be completely ignored. Practice writing those powerful headlines as much as you need to until you can write them in your sleep. You will find that they are well worth the effort.
Carolyn T. Cohn is the Chief Editor of CompuKol Communications. Mrs. Cohn has a wealth of experience in managing people and projects. She has run several editorial departments for various companies. Mrs. Cohn has 25 years of editorial experience and her expertise covers a wide range of media, such as online editing, editing books, journal articles, abstracts, and promotional and educational materials. Throughout her career, Mrs. Cohn has established and maintained strong relationships with professionals from a wide range of companies. The principle that governs her work is that all words need to be edited.
Mrs. Cohn earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.
Mrs. Cohn is a member of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA).
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