Hi Jeff here from PublishorPerish.FM with your 2 minute tip for marketing-minded sales leaders and sales-minded marketing leaders.
The process of writing awesome, problem-solving content can be time-consuming and agonizing for most of us. It takes hours and hours to develop your blogs, your videos, your presentations, your emails, your pitches; you take so much time to develop your content. And what about the discovery? What’s going to make your content so interesting that the receiver wants to open and read it? What story are you trying to tell?
It all boils down to the HEADLINE! You need awesome, compelling headlines that give a hint to the story and compel someone to open and engage with the content. This applies if you’re a marketer developing blogs or a sales person delivering presentations, emails and pitches.
I heard a great podcast called “The Lede” from the great guys at Copyblogger Damien Farnsworth and David Morris, who spent an entire episode on the four “U’s” of optimizing headlines for content discovery.
Here are the four “U’s” they covered for your benefit:
1. Useful
Ask yourself, “Is it useful?” These types of headlines often start with how to’s. “How to Engage,” “How to Discover,” “How to Fix Things” are examples. It goes without saying that you typically want to drive that type of value in the headline.
2. Unique
“Is it Unique?” Is there a compelling aspect that makes you perk up a little bit like “Oh, that’s a unique application I never thought of before.”
3. Ultra-specific
“Is it ultra-specific?” For example, adding “3 Ways to Accomplish Your Quota” or “5 Ways to Drive Engagement,” the more specific the better.
4. Urgency
“Is the headline a call-to-action?” “Is it urgent?” You can do this in a humorous way – like “Read this before your next presentation” or “Read this before you die.” There are lots of ways to create a sense of urgency.
Here are a couple of insights from the podcast:
- Typically you can’t work all of the “U’s” into a headline. But if you can get 2 out of 4 or 3 out of 4 you are accomplishing a lot.
- Another great tip that was mentioned was the fact that you should spend a significant amount of time finessing your headlines. Take the time to write down different ideas; you take so much time researching the content; take some time to optimize your headlines for discovery.
*Here’s another great tip for you: try using CoSchedule’s Free Headline Analyzer. CoSchedule conducted research on nearly 1 million blog post headlines and came up with a formula for the headlines that get the most shares across all of the major social channels. All you have to do is type your headline into the Headline Analyzer and it will provide you with a report of the quality metrics as they apply to your headline.
Hope that helps!
As always – think like a marketer and sell like an animal!
Cheers!