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Blogging in the Age of Content Marketing 16 17 Blogging in the Age of Content Marketing Blog titles are the first thing your audience sees and the effectiveness of your title will make or break whether they continue reading or move on to another piece. Especially with social media, a good title is the key for getting people to click on your link and read your content. However, despite knowing the impact that blog titles have on engagement, they are often the most difficult part of your piece to develop. Here are some tips for writing effective blog headlines to engage your audience and get them to read your piece. Instructional Titles: People love reading articles that teach them how to improve and learn more about a topic. If your b l o g p o s t o f f e r s i n s t r u c t i o n a l insight about a particular topic, consider the following types of titles: - How To Create Engaging Titles - Tips for Creating Engaging Titles - Top 10 Ways to Create Engaging Titles Titles that begin with "How-To", "Tips for" and "Top 10" (or any other number), are effective ways of indicating that the reader is going to learn useful information from your piece. Ask Questions: Questions are a great way to catch your audience's attention and entice them to read beyond your title. The best questions are ones that your audience is already thinking about as it will encourage them to discover answers by reading your piece. Short Titles: To optimize your audience's engage- ment, make sure blog titles aren't too lengthy. A general rule is to keep your titles at 8 words or less…more than this and you risk losing your audience before they even get to your piece. Transparency: M a ke s u r e yo u r a u d i e n c e c a n quickly extract the main point of your piece from the title. Sometimes writers get carried away with crafty and creative titles that ultimately leave readers confused. Especially with pieces that are shared across social media, you need a headline that readers can quickly digest. Test them Out: Try out different variations of titles and test their success. Depending on the type of content you're writing and the preferences of your audience, you'll start to notice trends in engagement. Assuming that the quality of your pieces are comparable, you can partly attribute engagement to the different types of titles you're using. Check your analytics and analyze the historic page view and click-through rates of your blogs. What are your top blog posts and are there similarities in the types of titles you used? Is a particular title format driving more engagement than others? By looking historically through your posts, you can start to track trends in engagement and optimize future posts accordingly. Pulling Them In: Headline Pointers 2.