How to Write Headlines that Excite Your Readers Into Wanting to Know More
Here’s what you need to do. I was watching Marie Forleo on her webinar talking about her wonderful class, “The Copy Cure.” And she said we needed to write 30 headlines for everything that we want to put out there. You must aim for 30 for any article, story, post, whatever you want to publish. And I was going “There’s no way I’m going to be able to write 30 headlines!” But you know what? There is. I was able to, and I figured out how.
Here’s the secret. Are you ready? It’s super simple. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it like this, but I sure could.
All you have to do is make it into a game. Get competitive with yourself. Turn it into something super fun, and you’re going to want to do it. So, here’s what I did. I challenged myself to write 30 headlines in five minutes. And instead of saying, “I’m going to do 30 headlines in five minutes,” I said, “How many of these can I do in five minutes?”
Ready? Set. Go!
Then, I sat down and competed against myself. I wanted to win that gold medal of headline writing. And you know what? I did! You can see what I did below. And you’ll see that it’s actually not that hard. Now you have to understand they weren’t all gold as you’ll see from the list. But enough of them were great that I’m going to be able to use them and it’s going to rock.
While you’re writing all the headlines, it will go something like this. The first few will be perfunctory. They’ll say something that you might want the reader to know. But they’ll be too wordy or not compelling enough. Or they won’t be straightforward enough to excite your reader into wanting more.
The middle ones might be whackadoo and way out there and feel like “What the heck am I trying this for? These don’t even make sense!” *
But the last few, the ones towards that 30 mark will begin to feel like gold. And that’s because this whole time, your subconscious has been refining your words. You’ve been bringing each one closer to what fits best with what you want your readers to know about your piece.
And here’s the fun part about having those 30 potential headlines. You can use some of them as subheadings in your piece. You might also be able to tweak them and insert them in the body to make points or make something more meaningful. Either way, you’ve created something useful for you and compelling for your readers. What could be better than that?
Are you having trouble writing headlines? What are you writing about? Comment below and let me know. I’d love to help if I can.
*It’s possible that one of these whackadoo ones will feel perfect, so if it does, use it!
