According to Zephoria over 293,000 statuses are updated on Facebook every minute, and more than 450,000 tweets are sent on Twitter. In this era of social media marketing, businesses invest a huge amount of time and money in content development. In fact, a team of professionals is appointed to time these posts to gain maximum engagement; however, only a few of them end up creating the intended boom, while others get lost in the ocean. Irrespective of hidden worth of information/offer, a large number of posts get only a handful of clicks and shares.
If you try getting insights on how to get more clicks and views for your social media posts, the most important and foremost concern revolves around headline. The significance of headlines can be estimated with the look at number of studies that are conducted to chalk out science of writing killer headlines. As the headline is the very first thing that readers come across while scrolling their way down to the end, creating perfect headlines is crucial in order to stand out in a reader’s news feed.
Given below is a quick guide for creating the perfect headlines for Social media posts and tips to optimize them for optimum engagement.
Study Your Customers
Before you start working on the content, make sure you know your audience. This would allow you to find the most appropriate platform to connect with them. Remember that some businesses need a dedicated platform that serves their niche; therefore, know where your customers are, what do they like, and then begin creating headlines for your posts.
Here are six easy formulas that make your headline game strong:
1. Clearly, State the Big Benefit
One of the easiest and certified ways to pull a customer is by stating the benefit right away. Readers click something to find an answer to a problem. The headline; therefore, should be presented as a medium to solve a problem. While creating a benefit headline, make sure you deliver on your claim in the post. Failing to do so will only turn off the reader. Also, you will lose a potential customer.
Sample Headlines:
- 4 things you should Know to Become an Industry Expert
- Beat the Heat with These 3 Cool Outfit Ideas
2. Don’t Be Run-of-the-Mill
As I mentioned above, knowing your audience is crucial before creating a headline. Today’s readers scan through their feeds quickly and click only the content that serves them specifically. Specific headlines may attract only a handful of readers; however, the people who click are already aware of the products you’re promoting on Social Media and convert easily.
Sample Headlines:
- 3 Effective Arthritis Gadgets for a 50-something
- Budget Cooking: Feed 5 for $20
3. Tap Into People’s Fear
Study your audience and figure out what they fear the most. Tapping into their fear and creating a headline that relates to it is an effective way to make them click. These headlines bring out the fear that readers have within and give them hope in the form of a solution. You can create interest and engage your visitors easily by drafting a headline that is a potential answer to their problems.
Sample Headlines:
- Is Blogging Dying? How Can You Prepare for it?
- Everyday Foods That Slowly Kill You
4. Bust Some Myths
Just like everyone else, your audience does have its share of doubts and misconceptions. Leverage these misconceptions and create headlines that clarify their doubts with the right information. Being the source of right information would help you to enhance your credibility and soon you will gain a loyal reader base that’s confident enough to convert.
Sample Headlines:
- Top 5 Blogging Myths Busted
- 6 Common Lies About SEO
5. Hook Them With Pun
The three main functions of a headline are to educate, engage and entertain the reader. Once you are done with educating them, focus on the opportunities to entertain them. While information is readily available on the Internet, the way you present it plays a vital role in your marketing. Incorporate a dash of humor in your non-serious content and measure how your audience reacts to it.
While using humor as a weapon, carefully analyze its effect on your audience prior publishing to avoid any conflicts.
Sample Headlines:
- What Not To Learn From Twilight Series
- You Belong to the Kitchen: 5 Comebacks that will Burn Them!
6. Analyze Your Headline
According to Copyblogger, more than 80% of your readers won’t click on a post if the headline isn’t powerful enough. Headlines are important indeed; however, you can’t just spend hours on making them perfect every time. This is when headline generator and analyzing tools can help you big time. After creating a headline for your post, run it on the analyzer tool, or simply create a new headline for your post on headline generator. Some of the tools that you can use to create perfect headlines for your posts are:
TweakYourBiz Title Generator- Type your Keyword, press enter and voila! TweakYourBiz generates hundreds of fresh titles for your post right away. You can download the list easily, go through all of them and pick the one that suits your content the best.
Thrive Headline Optimizer: With Thrive Headline Optimizer, you can test as many headlines as you have created and pick the one that’s perfect for your content. You can run different variations of your headline on WordPress, perform an a/b test and observe which headline is the best of all, once the post starts receiving traffic.
CoSchedule Headline Analyzer: CoSchedule Headline analyzer scores your headline out of a 100 and lets you know where it stands on the basis of headline type, character count, word count and the sentiment it portrays. Not just that, it also suggests keywords on the basis of your headlines.
I cannot emphasize more on the importance of headlines of your social media posts. They can increase conversions to 237% and improve the sales. Moreover, they establish your website’s mood and affect greatly how people perceive your brand. Therefore, try to incorporate the aforementioned tips while creating headlines.
You can also generate them online if you feel uninspired; however, remember that it could never provide you the specificity your readers expect.
Once your headline is ready, use the analyzer tool to find the best variation. With the hope that the given tips help you to create perfect headlines for Social media channels in future, I take your leave. Thank you!
[Main image – Flickr, Ian Myles, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic CC BY 2.0]
Anurag Gupta shares the bracket with the rising entrepreneurs in the digital marketing industry. He has been instrumental in designing and implementing the digital marketing strategy for Weblinkindia.net one of the topmost Web Designing & Development Companies in India. His limited knowledge and experience, accumulated over the years, find a vent on several online platforms including this one.