Create curiosity
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2025 3:41 am
Another way to get people to click on your headline and read your article is to create curiosity, a concept popularized by Upworthy . The basic idea behind this approach is to evoke curiosity by writing a headline that gives information about what the article is about, but leaves the reader hanging, eager to find out what happens next. Here’s an example of an article on Upworthy that uses curiosity to convince readers to click on it:
I wanted to know how Mr. Rogers felt about homosexuals. Here's what I found.
Curiosity can be incredibly powerful if your goal is to increase clicks. Copyhackers was able to increase clicks to their pricing page by 927% by using curiosity in their headlines. You can also use this in your subheadings and lead-ins so that when people start your article, they’re intrigued enough to read the whole thing. Note that headlines that create curiosity are generally not great for SEO (which should be more about clarity), but can be very useful for social media. Another important thing to remember is to make sure your headline isn’t too vague and that the reader still knows what the article is about.
11. Test negative headlines
Outbrain conducted a study of 65,000 headlines and found that headlines with negative words like “never” or “quit” performed 30% better than headlines with negative words like “best” performed 29% less iceland whatsapp list than headlines with negative words. The reason headlines with positive words performed worse is likely because these headlines are overused. Once you’ve found a good headline, consider writing a negative version. For example, instead of “ 5 Amazing Ways to Lose Weight ,” you could use a headline like “5 Things to Avoid to Prevent Weight Gain.”
12. Write different titles for different channels
Your blog post title doesn’t have to be the same as your SEO title or the title you share on social media. If you’re writing posts on a high-traffic blog, you might consider writing different titles to target different channels. Slate.com uses this approach to create titles for different channels.
Article Title: Why Do We Keep Planting Stinky Gingkos?
SEO Title: Why are we still planting fragrant ginkgo trees?
Social Media Title: Ginko Smells Like Vomit. Why Are We Planting Them All Over Our Cities?
The social media title is more engaged and likely results in more discussions and sharing. The article title is short and simple, but does not contain keywords like the SEO title.
I wanted to know how Mr. Rogers felt about homosexuals. Here's what I found.
Curiosity can be incredibly powerful if your goal is to increase clicks. Copyhackers was able to increase clicks to their pricing page by 927% by using curiosity in their headlines. You can also use this in your subheadings and lead-ins so that when people start your article, they’re intrigued enough to read the whole thing. Note that headlines that create curiosity are generally not great for SEO (which should be more about clarity), but can be very useful for social media. Another important thing to remember is to make sure your headline isn’t too vague and that the reader still knows what the article is about.
11. Test negative headlines
Outbrain conducted a study of 65,000 headlines and found that headlines with negative words like “never” or “quit” performed 30% better than headlines with negative words like “best” performed 29% less iceland whatsapp list than headlines with negative words. The reason headlines with positive words performed worse is likely because these headlines are overused. Once you’ve found a good headline, consider writing a negative version. For example, instead of “ 5 Amazing Ways to Lose Weight ,” you could use a headline like “5 Things to Avoid to Prevent Weight Gain.”
12. Write different titles for different channels
Your blog post title doesn’t have to be the same as your SEO title or the title you share on social media. If you’re writing posts on a high-traffic blog, you might consider writing different titles to target different channels. Slate.com uses this approach to create titles for different channels.
Article Title: Why Do We Keep Planting Stinky Gingkos?
SEO Title: Why are we still planting fragrant ginkgo trees?
Social Media Title: Ginko Smells Like Vomit. Why Are We Planting Them All Over Our Cities?
The social media title is more engaged and likely results in more discussions and sharing. The article title is short and simple, but does not contain keywords like the SEO title.