Why did the Internet Marketer Cross the Road? Wanna Find Out?
Want to know the answer? Well you’re going to have to wait for a minute! I’ll reveal at the end of the post. I promise I won’t make this too long……
Sorry if the title seemed like a lame joke.
This post isn’t really about jokes, nor is it about chickens crossing the road being substituted by a person.
What I really want to talk about is something that is quite important for anyone marketing on the internet:
How to write compelling titles for your blog posts, webpages, articles, emails and just about everything else.
Clearly, the internet is an information medium. If your business is based on the internet, you’re going to have to embrace how this medium works and one thing is very obvious:
It’s all about communication.
People are reading words, watching videos, listening to audio. It’s all about information being communicated to the reader, and also back the other way as with social media. So this in itself creates what I call noise.
Everyone is talking about their thing, everyone is blogging, twittering, youtubing, facebook statusing……..it’s noise, noise, noise everywhere!
I don’t know about you, but with all this noise, it’s impossible to have the time to read everything you come across so I do a lot of quick sifting through information. After all there are literally millions webpages out there in cyberspace.
If the title of a webpage, article or post sounds dull, it’s not going to catch your attention, and if it can’t attract attention, you won’t get much traffic.
Ultimately, if you want more traffic, you’ll want people to be reading your posts, so you need to catch their attention first!
Just before I dive into “how” to create titles that attract attention, I’ll let you into a little secret.
You may not have even noticed this reading this post or my other blog posts. Or maybe you have! But…….
I’ve never been a good writer.
I’m still a slow writer and I’m no expert by any means. I’ve had to learn this skill. I’m getting better, but learning everyday.
Infact, at school I used to try to avoid subjects that included doing a lot of writing, so I excelled at Maths and Sciences, regularly getting top grades for those subjects.
In college where I could choose what to study, so I chose Maths, further maths, Chemistry and Physics. I really wanted to avoid writing essays!
But no matter how much I wanted to avoid writing, I knew I had to develop this part of me because it’s obvious that to be successful in an online business, you’re gonna have to learn to communicate well! There’s no way round it. Even if you outsource all your writing, you still need to communicate well with your outsourcer to tell them how to write good headlines!
So without any more noise from me about the importance of good headlines, here are some tips to get your creative juices going and allow you to grab ATTENTION to your work!
Headline Attention Tips
- Use something surprising in your header. People always love an underdog story.
For example, My business mentor Alex Jeffreys told me last night how he used a headline similar to this to promote himself:“A dyslexic unemployed construction worker becomes world known business coach building several million dollar companies”
- Create curiosity like this blog post title. You could ask a question, write a cliche and turn it upside down; Use current events and link it with what you want to say.For example: “Why the world cup is crap and how I made a million dollars from this rap….”
And that just came off the top of my head! (I impressed myself there!…….I know, how sad.) But you know what I’m getting at right?
- How to’s are always good, but add some emotion and excitement into it and try to add some major benefit at the end.E.g “How to write incredibily compelling blog titles in twenty seconds or less”
“How to drive insane amounts of traffic to your blog in three easy steps.”
Here are some structure tips
- Use lists: E.g 10 easy ways to cook chicken, 5 quick methods to cook chicken, 4 killer strategies to catch wild chicken, etc.
- Use negative lists: E.g 5 mistakes every chess player should avoid, Top ten things to avoid saying on your first date, etc.
- Use Quiz style: “How much of a Trekkie are you? Take the test and find out.”
- Use story style: “Parrot trainer reveals his secrets methods to getting Polly talking like Ben Stiller.”
Here are some Development tips
- Get ideas by reading headlines from social bookmarks like Digg and Stumbleupon. Check out Ezinearticles too. You’ll get to see many cool headlines there.
- Read headlines from emails you get from the gurus. See how they write their subject lines and which ones make you click on them.
- Practise, practise, practise. Don’t worry about being crazy. Just mix everything and anything up and see what happens. Do it when you’re waiting for the bus or on the toilet……you’ll be surprised how time flies when you’re having fun!
Some blogs that have great titles
- Brandon Connell @brandonconnell.com He has so many posts in so many different categories you’ll learn how to write for different topics.
- Alex Whalley @Alexwhalley.com His writing style is so natural and effortless, learn how to grace compelling titles and engage your personality in the whole post too.
- Hector J Cuevas @hectorjcuevas.com Simple titles, yet informative and lets you know exactly what to expect with the curiosity factor.
The ideas mentioned above are by no means exhaustive, but it’ll give you some ideas to get you going if you ever get stuck.
If you have any ideas on writing good headlines and titles, please share your good stuff in the comments below! It’s great so share ideas 
Ok………………………………….
So back to the very first question. Do you want to find out why the internet marketer crossed the road?
Answer:
“Because he opted in to see what was free report was on the other side!”
Next Question For You
“Why did the internet marketer then cross back to the other side of the road again?”
If you want to find out, just put your email address in the form below and I’ll send you the answer straight away
You’re curious aren’t ya? Go on, enter your email and I’ll tell ya!
Lets succeed together,
Bailey
Hey Bailey,
Really great post Bailey! Lots of great advice here. And you’re right about practice. People who can write do it because they practice. The more you do it the better and more natural you’ll get at it. Your writing is great by the way. Very personable, I enjoy it.
Keep up the good work!
Peace,
Darren L Carter
Darren L Carter´s last blog ..Experiments in Lifestyle Design: Internet Business from Rural Japan
Hey Darren,
Yeah, practice is underrated nowadays in an instant gratification world. But I think those who do it succeed in big ways!
Thanks for the comments Darren, really appreciate it!
Bailey
Hey Baily,
Nice Post man. These are excellent tips. You have given some great advices in one post. Great man. I really like the “Headline tips”.
.
I know Brandon and Alex always write great Posts
Thanks for sharing this great Post.
~Dev
Dev @ Blogging Tips´s last blog ..Technshare Monthly Report 3: May 2010
Hey Dev,
Thanks for the compliments and thanks for coming by. Yeah, Brandon and Alex are great writers. You can learn so much just by reading their stuff!
Bailey
You guys rock! Thanks so much for the kudos, it really means a lot because I absolutely love writing and it’s nice to get the feedback like that (sorry Im so late to the party, for some reason i never got a trackback. lucky I always make sure I visit your awesome blog at least once every few days)
stay tuned – I’m going for an epic comment down below LOL!
Alex´s last blog ..Not making enough money? Then Change the Channel.
You’re a true leader Alex. Much deserving of the kudos!
I’m always scrimping for a good title to go with my blog and you have provided me here with some excellent tips. I only knew of list and I’ve not implemented the negative, quiz and story style. These are important addition to my writing arsenal.
Hey Walter,
Glad the tips came in useful. The more you do it, the more easy it becomes!
Hope to check out your cool titles soon
Bailey
Bailey:
Great post! The title did draw me in to see what the answer was.
You really have some great tips here that will help me. I go back and forth between creating SEO titles and catchy titles. I know we are supposed to write for our readers but I also want to use keyword phrases for SEO purposes.
Thanks again for the tips.
- Rick
Rick Byrd´s last blog ..A Personal Note to the MarketingWithAlex 3.0 Students
Hey Rick,
There needs to be that balance between title for the reader and for SEO for sure! I think I’ll be trying a 50/50 split, one post for seo, an other for readers and see what kind of results I get from it.
p.s read your introduction, great story my friend! I can totally relate to it. I hope you can make it big this time, plust you have all the support from us guys here too!
Bailey
Hey Bailey
Great post full of great info i really enjoyed reading
Thannks
Davy
Hows it going Davy? Hope you’re well mate and thanks for the compliment.
Catch you soon!
Bailey
Hey Bailey,
Superb blog post with some great tips and a good, a very good reminder for myself. Actually I think I should go and start a list of things I must include in my own posts. I am glad you reiterated the importance of a catching headline in our fast paced media world. To grab people´s attention nowadays is harder than ever hence a good headline is almost mandatory to have.
I will go and check out the blogs you recommended as soon as possible.
Keep up the constant good work, Bailey. Rock on
Mirko
Mirko Gosch´s last blog ..The Golden Foundation Of Keyword Research 2
Hey Mirko,
Thanks for the compliments. It’s an attention age for sure, so I guess getting the title is just the first part. The second is to be able to give useful and good content too so people will continue to read on!
Catch up with you soon mate!
Bailey
Hey Bailey,
Love some of the great headlines that you have there they are very catching and people will want to know more when reading them. Great stuff.
I was a bit of a maths person myself at school so this writing thing is not my forte but as you say practice and more practice.
One small suggestion on the headlines and that is to try and get keywords in there for google so that these killer headlines will get clicked when you are high on the search engines.
Great information mate
Glyn
Glyn Lafferty´s last blog ..Domain Name Secrets | How To Get The Domain Name That You Want
Hey Glyn,
Thanks for the advice on keywords for seo. Yeah, that is definitely something to bear in mind to get the best of both worlds of organic search, but interest in the post too.
Yes, it seems like everything is learning and practising at the moment!
Bailey
Hey Bailey
Great post and tips I am defo using them for my titles which are a little boring sometimes!
I know the answer…. it crossed the road because it seen Alex Jeffreys ha ha,
Sally
Sally´s last blog ..David Walker, Sally’s First Skype Interview…
Hey Sally,
Haha!
You have no problems with your titles being boring at all! I loved the “Five Commandments of blog hopping” title and excellent content too.
Chat soon,
Bailey
I can really understand not wanting to write essays – I think everyone hated those in my neighborhood!
You are right – communication is the key to blogging. If you have nothing to say, then a well written title will probably do you no good. The beauty of that is, I think, the more you write, the better you get with all aspects of blogging. Titles, SEO, etc. all become easier as you go along and continue learning.
Very nice post Bailey.
Have a great day!
mark´s last blog ..Innovation’s Last Stand
Hey Bailey, really fantastic post, laid out beautifully and it was awesome that you incorporated everything you talked about into the post itself.
I agree that a headline is the most important factor and the way I approach it is as follows:
I usually come up with a headline first, this gives me the framework for the entire post, but this is just for me. I then write a headline for Google after researching the optimum keywords to integrate, and then I write a headline for the readers.
What I end up with is three headlines that can morph to create the perfect one. For example, my latest post was originally called ‘Making (ad)sense of the channels’ because it told me exactly what I intended to write about. I then wrote a title ‘7 reasons why you are losing adsense revenue’ because that’s what Google likes. This title sux however and is a perfect example of what you talk about here, ie: make it catchy to avoid the noise (nice phrasing too -’noise’ -nice) so I ended up with the title you see below (commentLuv)
I can see that you have a knack for the titles and I have to say that you must be awesome at maths because you ‘think’ you suck at writing, but you don’t.
I find your style unique, engaging, easy to follow and all up I like reading it. So there!
Thanks so much for the mention Bailey, that really means a lot you know.
NB: The grammatically correct answer (and the more compelling one) should be ‘to opt in for the amazing free eBook and newsletter from the IM quest’
Awesome Bailey – really.
I think I owe you a link, and not because you sent one my way, but because you have moved up into my top ten favourite blogs with your engaging and relevant content.
ROCK ON!
Alex´s last blog ..Not making enough money? Then Change the Channel.
Hey Alex,
Thank you for your awesome input here. You’ve highlighted a very cool way to be creative and also incorporate titles for Google too. I must implement it myself!
You must divulge with us your secrets to writing your posts and how you get inspired to come out with great pieces so frequently! Is there something that you drink in Aussie we don’t know about?! hehe.
Catch you soon man
Bailey
Hi! Great post! A lot of insight! Got a very similar question for you… Why Richard the Lion Heart did not buy a helicopter? (Simple – there was not any)))))
Thanks,
Dmitri
Hey Dmitri,
Haha. That reminds me of: “Why don’t penguins fly?” Ans: Because they are a chocolate biscuit.
I guess people only get it if they’re from the UK. Actually, I don’t know…….Do they sell Penguins outside of the UK? Making me wonder now!
Thanks for coming by have a great day,
Bailey