1. Headlines that arouse curiosity (and gives a sense of awe)
When you read those headlines, you can’t help but feel curious.
The need to satisfy our curiosity is a natural driving force that pulls our attention.
If you can find away to arouse curiosity in the headline of your blog, ad copy, or subject line in an email, people will be drawn to it. They can’t help but open the email, read your blog, or investigate the product you’re advertising.
2. News Headlines
When humans first discovered fire, they sat around at night and shared experiences with each other.
One might’ve shared the successful hunting tactic that worked. Another shared how to escape an attack from a bear. What makes us different as a species, is our ability to share information.
We are wired to pay attention to “new” information. And that’s exactly what news headlines do.
Use news headlines when:
Here are some examples:
3. How-to Headlines
This one may seem obvious to you.
If I want to learn how to do something, I simply search “how to” in Google or YouTube and usually find exactly what I’m looking for in 60 seconds.
This headline is effective when you’re offering a solution to a frequent problem people experience.
Generally, the more specific the headline the better. Why?
Examples:
4. Question Headlines
One common mistake people make when using these headlines is they focus too much on themselves or the company. For example, “Want to know what Ash is up to these days?” I’m guessing you really don’t care about what I’m up to. If I was Kim Kardashian or Elon Musk, you might be curious, but for most people, this won’t work.
3 rules of thumb for good question headlines:
Some good examples of question headlines (I’m just making these up BTW):
5. Why… Headlines
These headlines are effective because people ask themselves… “hmm, I wonder why that is, I need to find out.” Or they think “I think I know why… let me see if I’m right.”
I bet you’re noticing a pattern.
The more you appeal to our curiosity, the better.
We just can’t help but want to find out.