Hopefully, you pay a lot of attention to writing your headlines.
I do.
I typically go through several drafts until I’m reasonably happy with a headline.
Headlines are important, because a good one captures attention and inspires people to start reading the body text. Bad headlines don’t.
Truth be told, I’m a bit of a headline nerd. I created an entire course on how to write them.
But… there’s more.
What about those subheads?
This question is from Charlotte, who took my course on How to Write Better Headlines.
She asks, “What is your thinking process as you brainstorm, formulate, play with, and analyze your headline creations?”
After writing headlines for 35 years, it’s quite the challenge to deconstruct the process I go through.
But here’s a broad outline of what I do…
A practical note… I work with a pen and pad of paper first. Don’t ask me why, but I do. Just for the headline.
OK… the process and sequence…
(What follows is the outline I wrote in advance of recording the video. They’re my talking points. Not a regular post or article. Just an outline.)
Great question from Lynn who is taking my course, How to Write Better Headlines.
The answer to whether I write the headline first or last is… yes.
I do both.
Let me explain. And this is the case whether I’m writing a page of content or a sales page. Same process.
(What follows are the notes I wrote in advance of recording the video. They’re my talking points. Not a regular post or article. Just notes.)
My recent videos have all been related to my course, Conversational Copywriting.
This one comes from a question asked by Michele Reder, who took an earlier course of mine, How to Write Better Headlines.
That said… as you’ll see… her question and my answer do bring us back to the topic of conversational copywriting.
So…
In one of the exercises in my headline course I ask students to rewrite a headline for a page of web content.
Here’s what I give them.
Any sales copywriter will tell you the headline is the most important element on the page.
If you don’t get the headline right, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of the page is, because nobody will read it.
Copywriters know this. And online content writers need to understand it too.
David Ogilvy, one of the greatest copywriters of the last century, used to say that once you have written the headline you have spent about 80 cents of every dollar your client will spend on that ad.
Put another way… 80% of your visitors read the headline, but only 20% will read the body of the page.
He made his observation about writing ads.
But you can say the same – and do the same math – when you look at the creation of content online.
I know, today’s headline is a bit of a brain-twister.
Here’s what I mean…
There are places online where we write headlines, and are fully aware that we’re writing headlines.
Examples include the headline you might write for a website’s homepage. Or at the top of a blog post. Or on a review page. Or on a sales page or landing page.
These are the places we expect to find headlines.
But how about an email subject line? Is that a headline?