As a content marketer, your job is to use content to sell something – a product, service, or message. Maybe you already drive sufficient conversions. But do you really want to settle for sufficient?
Your headline is the first thing readers notice about your blog post or landing page content. Whether or not the headline captivates them likely determines if they continue reading the content or bounce from the page.
Although different variations of headlines work, there are some common elements in successful headlines.
Recently, Auriane Alix shared some of the commonalities she found when analyzing Medium headlines. They are similar to some of the findings by HubSpot and Outbrain, which studied 150,000 article headlines in 2013. Among the high-performance qualities:
Headlines with seven words
Numbers in the headline
First word features what, why, how, or how (setting expectations) or
First word features the or this (indicating specificity)