5 Sure-Fire Social Media Headline Formulas That Work

Although content is important when you are trying to leverage social media sites like Netscape or Digg, the story title used for the submission maybe as important if not more important. Here are a few types of titles that I have found to be effective.

  1. Increase Your [Blank] within [short time period]
    This headline promises the reader that they will see an increase in something within a short period of time. People are impatient; they want to see results within a certain time period.
    • Increase Your Blog Traffic within 30 Days
    • Increase Your Wealth within 1 Week
  2. How-to Improve Your [Blank] through [number] Easy Steps
    People love how-to guides and lists so why not combine them? This headline shows people how-to do something in a list format.
    • How-to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings through 7 Easy Steps
    • How-to Improve Your Health through 5 Easy Steps
  3. [Blank] Goes to an All Time Low by [some sort of incident]
    By making a strong statement readers will be tempted to click through and find out more.
    • Comcast Goes to an All Time Low by Ripping Off a Senior Citizen
    • Yahoo Goes to an All Time Low by Copying Digg
  4. How-to [Blank] - The Ultimate Guide
    By using the phrase "ultimate guide" and "how-to" in the same sentence people feel they are going to learn something and never have to learn it again. Why learn something when you can learn it once by reading the ultimate guide.
    • How-to Install Linux - The Ultimate Guide
    • How-to Create a Power Point Presentation - The Ultimate Guide
  5. The [Name of an expert] Approach to [What the expert is good at]
    People love to learn from experts, so why not teach them.
    • The Guy Kawasaki Approach to Writing
    • The Adaptive Path Approach to Design

There are tons of other title styles you can use when submitting a story to socially driven websites, but these are some of the ones I use on a regular basis. If you are looking for more headline templates I recommend checking out Copyblogger.

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Trackbacks (2)

An Online Marketing Guide, February 17, 2007

“5 Sure-Fire Social Media Headline Formulas That Work” — The Digg experts at Pronet Advertising provide 5 sure-fire social media headline formulas that work. I'd go further than this and say that in my considerable experience in online marketing this style will help you create punchier titles and subject

Running A Small Web Design Firm - theNapkin - Web Design, Internet Marketing, SEO, February 17, 2007

“How-to Improve Your Google AdWords Account In 5 Easy Steps” — Google has created the most effective, targeted, easily measurable forms of marketing & advertising in history. With Google AdWords you can reach millions in seconds, and get in front of an appropriate audience and sell your goods or services to vi...

Reader Comments (8)

Jeremy Steele, February 16, 2007

I think you forgot one: [number]Sure-Fire Ways To [topic of post]

Neil Patel, February 16, 2007

Yea, there are a lot of them. Brian Clark is really good at writing catchy headlines.

Allen Stern, February 16, 2007

Of course you left off:

__ copies Digg

_ is a digg-clone

revision3 _

etc. :)

SEOsnafu, February 16, 2007

And then the holy grail of headlines;

Top 10...[blank] [blank]

Dawud Miracle, February 16, 2007

Thanks for the idea. I think I'll sit down and write my 'How to [blank] - An Ultimate Guide.'

Mukund Mohan, February 17, 2007

I think is that this is due to 3 things:

  1. Most blogs are read by people that are "early adopters" and want a quick fix & instant gratification. These headlines suggest that everything they know and dont know can be boiled down to a simple set of the "known"

  2. Most readers read over 50+ blogs and want to skim and these types of posts crystallize ideas quickly.

  3. These headlines all suggest "self help" as known from "experts", and again it probably goes back to the demographic of users reading these. I suspect they all want to always get better and are looking for that edge.

If you take a leaf from the old "newspaper journalist" (gasp) playbook, headlines have to grab attention for a reader to think the article is worth reading. These are not attention grabbing to me, but the are like a quick fix.

Zach Katkin Google The Ultimate Google AdWords Master, February 17, 2007

The ultimate master at increasing your overall 5 steps process to bottom line enhancement. I am trying one of these title suggestions out now, and will let you know how well it works.

Andy Beard, February 17, 2007

I think a lot depends on the demographics you are looking to target. I am quite please with the one I just came up with "Polish Gmail vs Google Gmail - The Poets vs The Court Jester"

I actually back up the story with a lot of facts and deep discussion. Then again the title isn't yet a proven success.