I had a few questions about titles this weekend. I’ll bring this old post out front and center once again in case you missed it.

What’s in a title?
How you title things make a tremendous impact on whether people will read or consider reading content. In this context, content is in the form of emails, blog posts, tweets, Ezine articles, and other forms of communication that you want others to read. In all cases the main goal is to get people to open, click, or otherwise save or bookmark for reading later. Let’s examine some of the forms of communication.

Email Subjects
The title is contained as what in email parlance as the subject. Subjects are treated a little bit differently based on who the email is coming from. The difference is based on one thing. That is trust. If the email is coming from someone they trust, friends and family for sure, they will open. But there is also information that was requested and comes in the form of newsletters, RSS feeds, and other aggregations of information. If someone doesn’t recognize the senders name they are typically going to look at the subject and make a determination as to what they are going to do. What the subject contains will determine the reader’s next actions. If it’s from you, you want to have as an inviting subject as possible.

Blog Post Titles
A blog post title works in the same way as a subject line in an email. Your objective is to get people to read your post. Hopefully, when your blog post is syndicated throughout the Internet via Twitter tweets, Facebook notes, blog backlinks, email bodies, and other forms of electronic communication it will compel people to open and read it. Another factor that has to be considered in blog post titles is the SEO factor. Your title should both contain a keyword or two and also be relevant to the content that is contained in it. If you have a title about cars, your content better not be about plants. I’ll talk about some of the psychological factors below.

Ezine Articles
Titles should work the same way as blog post titles but should probably have more of an emphasis on keywords than actions or questions contained in the title. Most people simply do not search Ezines. They use Google and Google recommends the Ezine articles to them. The more SEO friendly the title, the better the ranking and higher it’s possibility to be towards the top of the search. I also recommend your resource box contain a link to your blog.

Twitter Tweets
Now tweets per se don’t have the concept of a title but it should be contained some where in the 140 characters. Having important attention grabbing phrases that are contained in the actual article with the title in your tweets will help people feel compelled to click them and follow the link over to the source. Using certain psychological keywords will raise the probability of the tweet being opened. They will grab the attention of the readers.

In all these examples, if you understand underlying psychological impulses and urges you can use them to your advantage. So if we ask the question, what do people want?, what do people respond to?, what do people have an interest in?, and are people interested in?, this should provide us with some clues to help formulate a title. Here are some different types of titles that you should strive for?

Types of Titles

1. Tell them something true about them and then tell them to take action.
2. Create compelling curiosity.
3. Make claims that are almost unbelievable.  (Be able to back them up)
4. Create something of high interest to target direct interests.
5. Use humor.  If you can make them laugh they will click.
6. Inspire and motivate them.  If they feel good about themselves and they will act.
7. Make them mysterious.  People like mysteries.
8. Appeal to their logic.  Restate something they believe strongly.

So these are the categories or types of possible titles or subjects that can be used.  Now that we know what it is we need to formulate what words can we use that will compel people to act.  We need to use words that influence, persuade, and motivate people to act, (click, read, signup, etc…).  This can be accomplished by using words that can help people image something.  They are words that describe things in ways that make them bigger than life.  They are words that evoke emotion.  Here are some words that will practically compel people to their natural predispositions to investigate things that are curious, humorous, mysterious, logical, interesting, and bold.  This of course is not an exhaustible list.  They contain:

Words to Use

Conclusion

The list could go on and on. Using these words in your titles and subjects along with a keyword will work wonders for your traffic. Take the time to craft titles that will draw people into your world, get them to click it, and then read it. Spend more time on this aspect of your writing and you will be guaranteed to see results.

What other words do you like to use?
What are some titles that you’ve used that have worked for you?

If you enjoyed this article I would appreciate if you click the link below to tweet this post. I’ll use these concepts as examples to craft the tweets for this post.

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Thank you.