You will see e-book authors make ludicrous claims that the average North American reads at a sixth grade level. One author even claimed that Americans now read at a third grade level. This was no doubt to take away from the glaring spelling and grammatical mistakes he made throughout his book. It was as though this disclaimer excused his laziness in creating a low quality product.
The problem is not that we are becoming a nation of illiterates. The problem is that we are becoming a nation with an attention span of a two-year-old child. If what we see does not hold our attention we are merely one click away from the finding something that does. Experts say you now have three seconds to grab someone's attention. Your headline sells the article.
We all judge books by their covers and now we judge articles by their headlines. There is nothing wrong with doing this and in fact, it is nothing new. Newspapers have sensationalized headlines for decades in order to get people to read the story. The evening news took this concept even further with their commercial teasers. These advertisements would appear in the middle of a program and dropped little bombs so people would watch the news that evening. “Tonight, drinking a certain brand of milk can cause blindness. Tune in at seven to find out what you need to know to keep your sight.”
Writing a good headline is considered to be a talent. Writing a good title is also an important talent. Which essay would your rather read, The Poems of Robert Frost or Frosty The Poem Man? While it is important for your article to have a catchy title, it is equally important that the headline accurately reflect the article. Some people have begun writing headlines with well paying keywords while the articles are about something else entirely. This will result in angry readers and may result in a punitive response from Google as well.
Look on your title as a call to action. Ask yourself what the main point of your article really is. Write down this point and begin to play around with it. What will happen if people will follow the advice in the article? What will happen if people do not follow the advice in the article? Now focus either on the benefits or on the risks and try to narrow it down to a single phrase. Now look for some action words to punch up this phrase and you should have yourself a winning headline.
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