How to Write Good and Bad Blog Post Titles

I’ve been blogging for over 3 years, and after writing nearly 200+ of posts, I’ve developed a high-value niche audience of over 6,000 blog subscribers and 62,000+ Twitter followers.

My focus has been completely on writing about startups, devTools and writing for software developers.

What Works and Doesn’t Work for Me and a Few Interesting Stats

It may surprise you to know that the most popular 10% of my blog posts drive over 300x the traffic of my average blog post.

It’s a classic "Power Law Distribution."

One of the most important things about any blog post is its title and Yes "Blog titles matter"

Take a stand! Make an argument.

Examples:

Async work is the future for techies.
Work-life balance is a myth.
Copying can work. But most people can't pull it off.
How to do X…
Why I think Y is better…
10 ways that X…

What Not to Do in Blog Post Titles

What happens when you don’t use the patterns like above?

Well, the most common case is that people write blog posts that are informative, and descriptive, but abstract.

Something like “Apple and their products” or “my startup product features” just sounds weak and boring, compared to “Apple makes amazing mobile” and “10 amazing features in my new side project.

And at the same time, every post you write should never be like:

“5 Ways to X”
“10 Ways to Y”

You’ll sound cheesy and shit influencers, nobody likes to read.

So there’s a fine line there.

5 Tips for Your Blog To Stand Out

A blog post's title is as important as the content.
A good blog post title!= clickbait.
Writing a blog post is like building a product.
Refactor old blog post >> Writing a new post.
Add a CTA at the end and ask to join the email list.

Blogging Hot Tip

Blog titles are 80% of the work, but you write them as the very last thing but always keep this in mind Clickbait titles like "10 Ways You're Getting Blogging Completely Wrong (Number 3 Will Shock You)" may work on Twitter Feeds, but not in Google search results.

They just don’t come up.

Basically, the trick is, don’t use your title to describe your content, use the title to trigger an emotional desire to read your content. Do it well, and every post will spread far and wide in your target community.