Writing Headlines Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Writing for the web - online copywriting and content writing.

Writing powerful headlines for web content is a forgotten craft.

I don’t mean the craft itself is forgotten. I mean we simply forget to use it.

Somewhere in our minds we know the headline is important. We know it’s what hooks the reader, or not. And we know it has a big impact on whether or not our content is shared through social media.

So how come we keep grinding out boring and unenticing headlines for our content pages?

I don’t know what your excuse it, but for myself I sometimes publish content with boring headlines simply because I have forgotten to rework the placeholder headline I started out with.

This is a side-effect of the way I write any page or post. I throw down a placeholder headline as an anchor to get myself started. It’s often simply a short description of what I plan to write about.

The trouble is…

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Headline design? What does that mean?

It means writing and formatting your headline in a way that makes it jump out from the page, or email, or a smartphone.

It used to be that headlines had to do a single job, on the web page where the balance of the content followed. Read the headline, and then keep reading the body text immediately below.

Today, headlines still have to work well, immediately above the body content, but they also have to grab attention and hook readers when they stand alone.

Here are a few situations where your headline has to stand alone, or almost alone: When used as a tweet on Twitter. In an RRS feed. On a smartphone. In Reddit or Digg.

In these circumstances, your headline has to jump out from dozens of others, and get the reader to click through to the full page or post.

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