Do You Want A Great Title?

I recently wrote an article on what one could do to improve articles that were already published, and one of the suggestions got me thinking even more.

"On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar." - David Ogilvy (a.k.a. "The Father of Advertising")

You do not need to read this post to figure that your title needs to have the most important words of your article. If you don't believe me, just reread the above quote (it was from a man who knew what he was doing!)

Imagine a house with lavish interiors, designer furniture, and a best-in-class heating system. It also has a beautiful shower and a jacuzzi. It has a lovely balcony with a view of a great garden with apple trees.. (don't test my imagination on describing a beautiful house, I'm sure you've seen some).

Well, the only problem with all of that is you have to go through a shitty door to experience all the beauty. Even worse, it is the only thing you can see from the outside, and you won't have a clue what is inside unless you open the door.

Well, your title is that door. And why would anyone open a shitty door when there is another decent one right next to it?

You have about 1–3 seconds for people to look at what you present in front of them. If it isn't good enough for them to open the door, all your work is lost. You might as well have typed them up, printed, put in a bottle and ejected them into space. No one gives a shit what's inside if they don't get interested enough to go past the title.

And remember, a good title (& sub-title)also helps get your article picked up by the algorithms and search engines. I would like to focus on just 2 ways to write better titles in this post, you can find a lot more but I do not want to overstep my knowledge on the topic!

Rate Your Title:

There are tools that will help you understand how good your title is. When you use a tool, you let someone else judge your work, fortunately not another human being. And whatever ego burn you will have, you at least won't have to show anyone when you cry. The very first article I published had a score of 34, and I changed the title a couple of times since then.

I generally use capitalizemytitle.com; please do note that there are other tools that help and the logic used by these engines are not fault proof. I do not have enough expertise to list all the tools, but I am sure you can find them out quickly.

Title Generator:

If you have an idea in mind and thinking about the titles but cannot decide on one, some tools could help you in this regard as well. You can use a couple of keywords and get a list of possible titles. Even if you do not use any of them, they could inspire you to another unique and interesting one. I normally use 'Tweak Your Biz', but there are other tools!

We are competing for attention, and more and more people are writing here. Let us give ourselves the best chance to be found, and having great titles is a big help!

If you are still reading, I guess the title had something to do with it, didn't it?