Advanced Access Blog

Talk about piquing your interest, when I saw the title to this blog post, “I am a Horrible Realtor,” I had to click forward. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one because the blogs writer, Ken Tracy, had already received 94 comments in less than 24 hours. That’s a pretty powerful response for 5 words.

Internet users today are scanners, quick to pass over anything that doesn’t intrigue them immediately. Don’t let an uninteresting headline keep your readers away from what would otherwise be valuable or insightful information. If a humorous gem like the one above is not forthcoming, here are a few headline writing tips.

Steal Someone Else’s Idea (It’s Okay This Time)
They call out to you from the busy line in your grocery store, tempting you into an impulse purchase with their eye catching headlines; Magazines. Long standing masters of the headline domain, as they depend on their catchy blurbs to tempt people to open their pages, magazines have set the standard for immediate eye catching appeal with text.

Consider the magazine that last caught your eye. It’s fairly simple to make any title relevant to you.

Here’s a headline from a recent issue of Cosmopolitan:

The “Harmless” Habits That Turn Your Partner Off

Here’s the same title with a real estate spin:

The “Harmless” Habits That Turn Your Buyers Off

Appeal to Your Particular Audience
If your post is aimed at a specific group, make sure that they know right off the bat it’s for them. This makes it easy for the scanning Internet user to catch articles that would interest them. Don’t be too vague. Buyers are not a specific enough group. However, senior buyers are. For example:

Seniors: How to Find the Best Community for the Active 55+

Keywords That Always Work
Here are some tried but true keywords that nearly always make for a good title in a pinch:

• Free (i.e. “Free Advice For The Clueless For Sale By Owner”)
• WARNING (i.e. “WARNING: You’re Keeping The Buyers Away”)
• How To (i.e. “How To Stage Your Home”)
• Numbers (i.e. “4 Things Everyone Must Know Before They Choose a Realtor”)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Content, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.