How to improve your writing, and create not just a good headline, but a catchy one? No matter what your content type is, and if you’re either writing a small post or an in-depth report.

The headline is the first thing people will see on a page. Copyblogger estimated that 8 out of 10 people read the title. However, the title doesn’t keep them reading through your blog content. With these headline writing tricks, you’ll get attention from readers immediately.

Let’s get started.

Step #1: Use numbers & data in your headline

Using numbers and data into your headline is an effective way to make your headlines more fascinating to readers. Several research studies have shown that headlines with numbers tend to generate 73% more social shares and engagement.

Step #2: Take a unique rationale into account

Use unique rationales to write great headlines. The word “rationale” simply means “an underlying reason on why something should be done.”

**Some of the rationales that you can include in your headlines are: **Tips, Reasons, Lessons, Tricks, Ideas, Ways, Principles, Facts, Secrets, Strategies

Step #3: Call for attention

‘Attention’ simply means mental focus and serious concentration on a given task. How to get it? Here are 4 rules to follow:

• Make the headline unique

‘Unique’ means being one of a kind. In other words, your headline has to be different from others. But, how do you test for uniqueness?

Simple tip: plug it into Google and enclose the headline in double quotation marks.

• Be ultra-specific

Your prospects have questions and they want answers. If you can provide them with an ultra-specific headline and the answer to their questions, you will convert them into loyal readers and customers. The more precise you are, the more authority you’ll gain in your industry.

• It should convey a sense of urgency

Urgency-based headlines will always grab attention because it makes the reader anticipate what comes next. They don’t want to miss out on what’s on the other side of the headline, once it’s clicked.

• Your headline has to be useful

Useful can mean several things — practical, helpful, valuable, informative, worthwhile, beneficial, advantageous and so on. The bottom line is to help the readers experience hope, knowing that their problem can still be solved.

Step #4: Use headline formulas

What makes a headline good is it’s a formula. Every content marketer has one or more formulas for writing headlines. When using formulas, make sure to include power words that will get people to buy your product or join your waiting list.

• ‘Little known ways’ *formula: How many times have you used this formula to write a catchy headline? Discovered that the *‘little known ways [put your solution here]’ formula is typically a social magnet.

• *‘Get rid of [problem] once and for all’ *formula: Who wouldn’t want to permanently get rid of an annoying problem that they’re faced with on a daily basis? When you write your headlines with this strategy in mind, you’ll captivate your audience from start to finish, because they want to know the secret, too.

Ruslana is a Lead Generation Manager at JetThoughts. Follow her on LinkedIn.

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