In order to drive traffic, online businesses need to create content and promote it across the web. A key factor to get your content noticed and attract visitors is finding the right clickbait headline to make your content seem appealing at first glance.
A “clickbait headline” is simply a buzzword that refers to headlines specifically designed to attract visitors and thus, make content go viral.
To find the right balance between writing a good headline that reflects the quality of your article and a clickbait headline to make your content clickable and drive traffic to your website, email and social media, Cloudswave invited an expert to dig more into this topic.
We interviewed Jeff Bullas, one of the top influencers in content marketing, to get more of his insights on this topic and learn more on the Do’s and Don’t’s when trying to come up with the perfect clickbait headlines.
Jeff is a blogger, author, strategist and speaker who helps businesses optimize their online presence through content marketing and social media. Jeff was named #1 Global Digital Marketing Influencer in 2016 and #1 Content Marketing Influencer in 2015.
How to Write a Clickbait Headline?
Jeff Bullas Q&A:
Q1. How would you rate the effect of a headline on the success of an article? Do you think that headlines really affect the virality of articles?
That’s the first one, the effect of headline success on the article got me to look at some research done by some of the best publishing content marketer on the web, which is the likes of Buzzfeed, ViralNova and UpWorthy. Upworthy asks all the editors to submit up to twenty headlines per post.
They find that the difference between one headline and another can be the difference between going viral and not going viral and up to 6000% increase by using a headline that performs lot better than another one. So, headlines are absolutely critical in your content marketing.
Q2. Thank you jeff. What are steps that you follow to craft a good headline?
Sometimes, if you’re new to it, it’s maybe to print off some examples of great headlines that work with the old copywriter, books, or some of the good guidelines that you find online and have a look at how they write headlines.
And then, just use some of the different types. So, you might have a headline that is a list headline. You might have one that is curiosity-get headline. You might have a how-to headline. You might have a controversial headline.
So, as far as your skill level, when you’re learning, the best thing to do is basically to get some cheatsheets and use those as guidelines to help you write headlines and just keep practicing.
So, essentially, if you’re learning the art of writing a good headline, is to have some good templates and examples and then, use those as the basis to write a headline.
And as you get more expertise and experience, you quite often don’t have to refer to those as much anymore or at all. And just use your experience and just try different things. And you’ll get pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t.
And the thing is, you’ll never gonna get a viral headline or you’re always gonna get a viral piece of content. So, it’s always about testing.
I can test headlines on Twitter quite easily and you can test them on email. So, it depends on what medium you want to use. And you test them on all your audience platforms.
Q3. Alright. Jeff, I know you mentioned that, obviously, testing is quite important to headlines. And I’m sure it also depends on the various topics, but, from your experience in general, what type of headlines are going to catch the attention of readers, list headlines like “10 things to do whatever…”, or how-to headlines, or controversial ones? Can you tell us more about that?
Yeah, as far as types of headlines that I find really worked well, the first one is lists; you know, big lists headlines. And, actually, odd numbers work better than even numbers.
So, it can be “21 ways to do something” or “21 intriguing photos”.
So, and then, the other ones could be a controversial headline. I used one a couple of years ago, which had the headline “Why you should forget Facebook?” And that absolutely went viral. It was top performing. I’ve posted it on Linkedin as well and it was the top performing Linkedin post globally for the week and it got like 300,000 views and 1,000 comments.
So, controversial headlines work very well.
The other one is negative headlines, so the third one that I found works and, you know, basically, “11 mistakes that you shouldn’t make as a blogger” for example. That combines negative as well as a list, so, essentially, you can play with a combination, so you can use a list headline and make it a negative one as well. That can work extremely well.
So, these are the sort of things you learn over time as you try different things, then, you don’t have to refer so much to cheatsheets and you can just go “Okay, I’m gonna write a negative one and see what it looks like” and you must say “I’m gonna write a list headline and give that “23 tools”, for example, on “how to do a productive content marketing” or “11 tools or questions on content marketing”.
So, this sort of things you’re gonna toss around in your head. The reality is that you do have to write multiple headlines. That’s what’s really important. That’s why the likes of UpWorthy demand of their writers when they submit an article to submit 20 different headlines with each individual article.
Q4. So, when you do test your headlines, what kind of steps do you follow to do that? Do you have specific tools or do you have any advice on that?
If you’re gonna use an email, you might find that with an email or if you’re running a series of emails, you might find that if you write, initially, a headline that might be topic-specific, in other words, for example “Social Media Tips for Beginners” and that obviously those interested in social media would click on that. Then, the next email you send out might be “Did You Hear About This?”.
That’s a curiosity headline. So, that’s gonna appeal to a broader range of people, but then, once they click and start reading, they might find that interest drop.
So you get, one will get not as much clicks, let’s say the topic-specific one and then, the next one would be the curiosity headline, which gets a lot of clicks, but then, you might not get click throughs on the email.
On the other hand, you might run with Twitter. You might write a headline that runs on Twitter and you tweet that. And you might run three or four different ones around too, apart during the day. And, then, you might test that with an image and see which one works best.
And then, you actually, would retweet the one that works best. Because you find that if you get the right headline on Twitter, for example, along with an image, you might find that, it’ll ,actually, get 600% more clicks.
So, you can test it on email, you can test it on your blog, you can test it on social such as Twitter. So, you need to be testing in various platforms of course.
You know, the virality of a headline is also gonna dependent upon 1) the audience, and 2) the social network you’re using. So, it’s just so many variables. So, you can use different tools to help you write headlines. They’re imperfect.
I think human art and creativity is very very important. So, today, with technology, there’s the art and the science of headline writing that you need to keep in mind. You cannot do that one without the other really.
Q5. Out of email and social network and things like that, which one do you think is the most effective in testing headlines?
I thinks there’s one right answer to that really, and that is you should be testing headlines everywhere.
I use Twitter, I use email, I use my blog posts, and I use other social networks as well.
People on Google+ tend to be more skeptical than people on Facebook. So, one headline that works on Facebook won’t necessarily work on Google+.
So, you might find that you need to test them across a whole range of platforms.
Then, it comes down to how much time you have. So, if you got a big team and you get a big campaign, you get a lot of budget, then, you might go like “Ok I’m gonna test five platforms, and I’ll put five different headlines on each one of those and then, we’re gonna pick the best one and then, we’re gonna run with that one as the ad.”
So, it really comes down to time and resources.
Q6. Is there a specific time of the day where posting specific headline works better than another time?
The answer is very simple. It depends on where your audience is. If you have a global audience and it is spread all around the world, well, you need to be posting that headline 24/7.
For me, my biggest audience is in the USA, so I make sure that my highest frequency of posting is done at day time hours in the USA, because I have 45% of my followers and readers and subscribers over email come from North America.
So, if you say “I only post between 9 and 5” and If you’re in India and your major audience is in the USA, well You gotta be doing 9 to 5 in the USA. You really got to think about whether you have a global audience or a local audience.
And that really determines it. Some people would say that posting on the weekend works best. My experience has been that the traffic on my blog and also engagement on Twitter and all the channels, actually, drops on weekends for me.
So, still again, you gotta go and test your audience. You know, have they switched off on the weekend? if it’s a general Facebook post, maybe. They might not. That might be more switched on. So, it’s a very crowded web, you just gotta go and test it.
Q7. The next question is about headline generators. I know you mentioned that there are a lot of popular websites such as Buzzfeed among others, they post up to 10 or 20 headlines for each post and they choose from them, but do you think that headline generators are, actually, a good option to save time?
I think that can give you ideas. I wouldn’t use them as my basic and as the only tool, but I would use them as an idea generator. I think headline generation tools are great because they actually prompt your thinking.
I think at the end of the day it’s still best to have human creativity on that, but then, you test it again and see which ones work best. So, as an inspiration, as a guide, I think headline generator tools are actually not bad.
I wrote a couple of blog posts about it a while back and tested some and they are fun and worthwhile for people, especially, when they are just learning the art for headline writing.
Q8. With all the steps you mentioned, how much time on average do you spend on crafting a headline?
There is no black or white nor right or wrong. The answer to that is as much time as you can spend. Early on, I could spend quite a lot of time because I was still learning the art of writing headlines. Or maybe spend 10 to 15 minutes to organize that over. Today, I might only take 5 to 10 minutes.
You know, there are a lot of posts going out on Twitter etc. So, I think the answer to that is just incredibly bright. For example, you might say “I’m just gonna spend 10 minutes.” I think you just take as long as you need to, to make sure that it’s the best headline that you have the time to do. We’re all busy, so it just depends on what time you’ve got. And also how important the client is. And again test it.
I’ve read that, ideally, you should spend as much time on writing headlines as on writing the article. Do you think it’s the right time to allocate to drafting headlines?
That’s an interesting guideline, if that was the case, for the blog post, I write up to 2000 words, that would take me 4 to 5 hours. I can’t spend 4 to 5 hours writing headlines. So, if you’re writing a short article 200 to 300 words, maybe.
So, I think that comparison was actually a little bit simplistic. It’s a nice ratio, it sounds cool, it’s a good soundbite, but I wouldn’t be recommending that. But, yeah, spend a decent amount of time and when you get more experience, you can write headlines a lot quicker than you did when you started off.
For me, I used to agonize, I could take quite a lot of time to go through a whole bunch of headlines. Whereas, today, I can create a bunch of headlines (10 or so) very quickly and I choose what I’m gonna maybe test. So, it really comes down to experience as well.
Q9. From your experience, what do you think is the optimal word count for a good headline?
I don’t get too hung up on word count. I believe, though, that some of the sites from people that measure it, from big content creators and publishers such as the ones I mentioned before; Buzzfeed and ViralNova, I think they mentioned up to about 17 words can be used in a headline or 15 from memory. Don’t quote me on that.
And I’ve done that; I’ve tried writing quite long headlines just to see how they went and they went quite well, but yet, a short headline can just nail it, You know. That one that was right in my last viral post on “Why You Should Forget Facebook” got 5 words.
So, there is gonna be a lot of guidelines and a lot of things to tell you should write 15 words or 11. It could be 10 to 15. It could be 7 or 8, I can’t remember the number off the top of my head that some of these platforms review, but don’t get too hang up on making it just to fit a formula. I think that’s when it gets a little bit formulaic, it’s gonna be poor, it’s gonna be stereotyped.
Q10. Speaking of word count; I mean, that implies character count as well, do you think that the content of a headline should be the same as the meta title, speaking SEO wise?
Not necessarily, I might use just a section of the headline as a meta title. So, I might have a headline “11 content marketing tips that you need to implement today” and the SEO meta title would be “content marketing tips”.
And that works well, if you look at plugins like yoast for SEO for wordpress blogs. That works very well!
Alright, so that should be the same thing for the URL slug as well? Right?
For the URL slug, I’d leave it the same as the headline because, as long as you got the meta SEO title in the URL, because I think it’s important for people to see that the URL slug, actually, matches your headline.
And Google is pretty smart; it can pull out the Meta title, SEO key phrase, such as “content marketing tips” and that’s what a lot of people search for.
So I want to make sure that the meta title that you’re creating, actually, is a not-too-competitive keyword phrase, and that there is enough people searching for that actual phrase.
Q11. What do you think are the mistakes that are most commonly made when writing headlines? Can those mistakes really turn an article from hero to zero and make potential readers skip your article?
Absolutely. If you don’t write good headlines, then you’re missing out a lot of traffic. So, I don’t know if it will take it to zero, but that certainly won’t help you.
You’re gonna write for the clever one billion websites, so, I would recommend anyone; just keep writing the best headlines they can, see which ones work and write more of the same varieties and I use a lot list headlines because even though they may look redundant, but they work.
So, they’re oldies but goodies and then, in the middle of that go on and test negative headlines, controversial headlines, curiosity headlines and just see how they go. You don’t wanna have every post is a list post. That’s a bit boring.
You know, have some fun with the creativity and craft a variety of headlines, slipping some How-To’s there. You know, do those sort of things as well.
Can you give us an example of a bad headline?
Just go and look on the web, you’ll see a bunch of them, tons of them, millions of them. I think a headline that gives away everything that’s in the post is a bad headline.
You know, there is no reason to read it. So, it could be a curiosity headline like you see on Buzzfeed (again, I’ll use that as a guide because these guys really nail headlines); the curiosity they use is just so great that you’re actually compelled to click because you just wanna find what’s going on.
You know, it’s about human emotion. So, at the top of my head, I can’t give you a bad headline because I don’t like talking about them really.
Q12. Do you think it is necessary to add a dek, a phrase to further explain the headline and the story behind it, in order to keep the readers interested and intrigued?
I think you need to reveal enough to get them to click. And then, when they get to your blog post, for example, or Facebook post, your first sentence is interesting and still doesn’t reveal everything you’re gonna be doing.
Again, it’s so much like constant curiosity. You’re gonna be drawing people in to read the rest of the post. So, yes, you want to get them to read, to get to your blog post or to your article or to your ebook or to your slide deck or to your facebook post or to your video.
And then, you don’t reveal the story because, you know, you don’t wanna give it all away because that’s what is all about. If you gonna watch a series and then at the end, this guy got killed, then you’ll say “Well gosh, I already know the story!”.
So, curiosity is gonna be a big part of what you’re doing and you just don’t give it all away. Start with an interesting sentence, make an interesting paragraph and then, maybe, make a great introduction to whatever you’re writing, for example.
So, to further explain the headline, you’re gonna provide maybe some context and maybe provide something interesting that alludes to the headline, but don’t you give it away. Intrigue is very important.
Q13. Ok, so jeff, I was wondering, because you say that intrigue and curiosity are quite important factors in crafting a headline. We’ve noticed from speaking to various writers and from reading articles about this topic, that lately Clickbait type headlines have gotten a bad reputation because people use them to drive traffic into their article, but in the end, the content of the article does not match what the reader is leaning towards. What do you think about that?
I think clickbait that delivers really crap, really bad crap, you’ve got a really wrong headline and I, actually, see it mostly in news sites, even reputable ones here in Sydney in Australia, I’ve click on a headline and I’ve gotten to it and I thought “Well, this has almost nothing to do with the headline”.
So, that for me, is annoying and also credibility reducing. So, I totally agree with that statement you made that clickbait headlines can give your brand a bad rep. So, for me, the content has to deliver on the headline, absolutely.
With the latest craze about clickbait headlines, and seeing all the news websites using them to drive traffic as you mentioned, do you think their bad reputation would affect other blogs that would like to use them properly and with value in their content? Is there a better way to craft clickbait headlines in order to avoid that reputation?
You need to be consistent. You should use a great article that matches the headline. It might be a sexy article; you can call my Facebook post, for example, “Why You Should Forget Facebook” as clickbait, but when you read the article, it’s actually well validated, well backed up and it’s not clickbait.
So, a headline can look like clickbait, but if you deliver a quality piece of content that is well researched that backs up the headline, then, that’s fine. So, I don’t think there’s much tension when writing good headlines.
Just create great content that backs up the headline. End of story. It could be a 1000-word article.
So, don’t deliver badly written content that doesn’t match the headline. It just doesn’t have necessarily to be clickbait, just write great content that backs up what you lead with.
Q14. So, speaking of clickbait headlines, do you think that using emotional elements and superlatives affect the success of a headline?
Oh, absolutely. It’s about touching the human heart and not just mine. That’s why negative words work so well. People respond to that and it’s just sort of sad, in a way, but they’re good.
So, you can teach a positive message with a negative headline. So, the reality is that headlines are very very powerful and you should be using emotions in them as much as you can, as long as they’re credible and they deliver.
Q15. Thank you Jeff for the info. Now that we have covered the main topic of the interview, which was about how to write clickbait headlines, how to make them effective, as well as the pros and cons of using them , can you speak a bit about your own story, how you got started?
I was in a pretty sort of painful moments, painful part of my life; I was in the middle of a divorce, I was unemployed, I’ve just closed a business that had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
And I started reading some good books and I also joined Facebook because a lady I was going out with at that time invited me to join and I joined up in 2008.
And I noticed people’s obsession with social media, so I started looking at it.
And I’ve read David Meerman Scott’s book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” discovered the power of content to attract people to you, and thought it was pretty cool.
And then, I came across the Hubspot blog, which was creating great content and still do today.
And then, I also read two verses of “The 4-Hour Workweek” to sort of paint a vision of the digital entrepreneur, I suppose, that wasn’t bound by geography, but just the web.
So, I came across a blog post by Hubspot, which said if you have an inkling or what you might wanna write about, start a blog.
So, I was like “Ok, I wouldn’t mind writing about social media”, so the blog started in 2009 and we started creating content all around social media.
It’s just in a section between technology and humanity, so it seems just like a global mindmill, a super conscious that connects all of us globally, just like what we’re doing here. It was all about technology and I noticed people’s obsession with it, so I decided to start writing about it.
So, it was really a passion project. Actually, I was a content marketer from day one, I just didn’t know that I was. And the blog continued to grow and I started getting invited to speak around the world and got paid for it.
So, we continued to grow the blog and met all fascinating people and travel a lot. So, today, I have a full time business that gives me a lifestyle I love and also enables me do what I love which is create, publish and market and teach people what I’ve learned.
So, it’s been a fascinating journey. I just love what happened. It’s a passion project that became a business and continues 7 years later. It has just been a lot of fun.
About Jeff Bullas:
Blogger, author, strategist and speaker, Jeff Bullas helps businesses optimize their online presence using content marketing and social media. Jeff was named #1 Global Digital Marketing Influencer in 2016 and #1 Content Marketing Influencer in 2015. He was also featured in Inc.com among the “20 Digital Marketing Experts to Follow on Twitter” in 2015.
The post How to Write a Clickbait Headline? Interview with Jeff Bullas appeared first on Cloudswave Blog.