What's In A Name: How To Create Amazing Post Titles

It takes serious effort to get your content noticed in today's super-cluttered internet world of social media. Most people on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like are just making noise and with so many posts and pics and tweets, your content gets buried as soon as you refresh the page. So how do you get your brand's content seen?

You took your time to carefully craft your message. You've found the perfect picture to post along with it. But now what? You have literally just 3-7 seconds to grab your readers attention before they scroll on by. So, how do you cut through the static and grab attention for your articles? 

The answer? Great post titles. Now, before you slap your forehead and say, "Gee Kev, thanks for that nugget of wisdom." This is trickier than it seems, believe me. To be fair, there is no sure-fire way to get anyone to click your link, but with a few simple techniques, you can up the odds in your favor.

Ways to Draw Attention to Your Posts

• Elicit Emotional Response: Most readers these days are bored. They're looking for a way to escape reality. And the best way, in my opinion, to get a reaction is an emotional response. Content titles that stir up a deep emotional response get the best clicks. This is tricky, however, because we don't want to anger or alienate our readers.
• Funny or Outlandish Posts: This approach will also increase click through rates. It's difficult to gauge, though, as what is funny to me might be dumb to you. My post "Selling Grandma's Unmentionables: Creating Content That Gets Results" is a good example of this. What was the first thing that came to mind? If you answered, "what the f---?" Then, in theory, you would've clicked the link. And plenty of people did.
• Satirical/Reverse Psychology Titles: While the purpose of a title is to inform the reader what's inside, Using reverse Psychology in your titles can move your viewers to take the bait and click. So, instead of saying, "How to Create Great Post Titles", you might try, "How not to Create Great Post Titles." Or, "How to Create Horrible Titles". You could even be a little bit brash and brazen with a title like, "Why Your Post Titles Suck."  It all depends on your audience.
• Long-tail Keywords That Convert: As I mentioned in my last article, keywords are, well- key! Absolutely essential to a good title as Neil Patel explains, is a long-tail keyword rich title that makes sense. This will help your SEO ranking factors as well as let your reader know what's inside. There are numerous free keyword finder & optimizer tools out there. Use them!

Hubspot has a great blog post on how to create great post titles that get attention, as have plenty of others.They even have a blog title creation tool. But all in all the best thing you can do is to create great content, curate great photos, and then play around with your titles. I typically write down 5-10 titles for a piece of content and let them bounce around in my brain a bit. At times, I'll ask for an outside opinion, or even post the content twice, with both titles and test them out.

There is no perfect way to know if your title will get results except for one. Try it out. Heck, try out two by using an A/B Test to see which is more popular. Clean it up and release it again with the better one. What moves someone to click on one post and not another is not an exact science. But, with a little practice, you will find your niche in title creation. Good luck, and happy creating!