When it comes to content marketing, your headlines are probably the most critical element to converting people into readers. If your headline is not catchy enough, if it is too long, or even too short, it will fail to attract, engage and convert more visitors into readers.
Also Read: 10 Tips to Write Engaging Facebook Posts [infographic]
Your headline is critical: it sets expectations for your reader. That also means that your headline should totally be relevant to your content, otherwise you would simply lose your readers’ trust. They are investing time to read your articles. If you don’t deliver what you promised, they will feel deceived.
The Success Of Your Headline Depends On Your Objective
Whether you are using content marketing to drive more users to your website, engage with your readers or convert your visitors, there are rules that apply to what makes a good headline, and it almost always come down to using the right words.
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The awesome guys over at Market Domination Media designed a cool infographic that will let you know which words you should be including into your headlines to maximise their impact. Of course, there are also a whole bunch of words that will do the exact opposite of what you aim for, so be careful. And on top of that, a same word can be a good or a bad thing, depending on what the objective behind your headline is (i.e. attract more visitors, engage with them or convert them).
How Long Should your Headline Be?
When it comes to the length of your headlines, there are quite a few factors to consider. Ideally, the shorter the better, but keep in mind that the most important for a headline is for it to make sense and give your readers a reason to read.
A few things you should definitely consider though:
- – Keep your headline under 117 characters so it’s tweetable with a link
- – For SEO and search, headlines under 65 characters work best
- – However, headlines that are too short (under 80 characters) may penalise your CTR
So what is the winning formula? Well, it is the best mix between making sense, helping the reader understand what he will be reading, while keeping it short and engaging. If you’re in doubt, the cool guys over at CoSchedule have an awesome tool to measure the “score” of your headline.
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And to sum-up all that, and go even further, check this awesome infographic by Market Domination Media:
Read next: Who Can Stop The Explosive Rise Of Pinterest And Tumblr?
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