5 steps to writing effective headlines

Sep 03, 2006

Writing effective headlines is a hot topic and it should be. Headlines represent the gist of what you want to convey. Your headlines basically solve three purposes:

Getting others’ attention
Giving an idea to your readers what exactly the section falling under the headline contains
Optimizing your web page copy for search engines

Without stereotyping the Internet readers (I too am an Internet reader) I would like to say, according to the general perception, that their attention span is short and they want to assimilate maximum with smallest effort. I don’t think it is true, but then, it doesn’t mean I don’t believe in crisp copies and hard-hitting effective headlines to facilitate fast reading.

Writing effective (read good) headlines should be in the habit of a well-trained copywriter and content writer. This is what I wrote a few days ago about how to come up with effective headlines. In that post I didn’t elaborate upon the 5 steps to writing effective headlines. So here I’m doing that:

Write the body text — 150 or so words.

OK, I know many copywriters say that you should first write the headline and then the associated text. Although every copywriter and content writer has his/her way of organizing thoughts, I prefer, and recommend, writing the text first and then using that text to come up with the most appropriate headline. Two things happen if you do it this way:

You are not constrained by your headline
You know exactly what kind of headline can represent your text

Choose a sentence that best represents the body text.

Normally, there is a main sentence in your body text. Sometimes it is easy to detect it, sometimes it is difficult, and sometimes it takes some practice to dig out that gem and use it as your headline. But then, that need not be your final effective headline…

If that’s not possible, write a sentence that best represents the body text.

If you cannot find a main sentence in your body text, you have to construct your own. Believe me, if you cannot come up with a sentence that completely (or even partly) represents your body text, then you really need to re-write your body text — there’s a great chance even your readers won’t be able to make sense of it. In fact this can be a good tool to help you gauge the effectiveness of your body text. If you cannot sum it up in one cogent sentence, it either means you need to break into smaller parts, or you totally need to re-write it.

Make it as crisp as possible.

The shorter it is, the better it is. Shorter headlines reduce them to pithy expressions that people often use during their searches. For instance, on Google if you search for headlines first or body text this blog appears at a fairly good rank. Apart from the search engines, shorter but attractive headlines appeal to your readers too.

Select it as the headline.

Well, the most obvious thing to do, isn’t it?

In the end, I wouldn’t totally discard the idea of writing the headlines first and then the body text. Sometimes you choose headlines for a specific reason, for instance, attracting search engine traffic for your chosen keywords and key phrases. Then it’s a good idea to write the headline first.