How to write blog post titles that get more page views

If your blog post doesn’t have a good headline, it might be tough to attract readers’ attention. A great headline makes somebody stop in his or her Facebook newsfeed, Twitter timeline, or wherever they are on the Internet, and click a link because you’ve made them genuinely curious. Websites like Buzzfeed seem to have found a formula that generates both views and shares, so we decided to take a moment to try to figure out what they’re doing so well to get such great post engagement.

1. How To: Editors of fashion magazines have to use their cover to sell their magazine, so they’ve undoubtedly spent a ton of time honing in on how to make a cover view convert to a sale. Fashion magazines have found their way to huge success by making “How To” headlines like:

How To Get Over Your Ex-Girlfriend With One High Five

2. Lists: If you’ve made a list blog post, you might give it a title like the following:

10 Things You Can Do Tomorrow To High Five Better

There are a lot of ways that you can use path, time or entity when writing a your list headline. Here are a few examples:

• 10 tips that…
• The 5 Key trends that…
• The 15 minute workout that…
• 10 secrets to…
• 99 ways to…

3. Achievement/Statements/Facts: An interesting statement can get a lot of people to click to your post. Here is an example of a achievement/statements/facts headline:

Be the Best at High Fiving All of Your Friends

Here are a few example beginning statements you could use:

• Become a…
• Start to…
• Never lose again in…
• Be the best at…

4. Quizzes/Questions: You’ve probably been seeing quiz results flowing down your Facebook newsfeed non-stop recently. If you want to hop on the quiz trend to drive traffic to your blog, here’s an example quiz headline that would help drive quiz participation:

Quiz … what kind of high fiver are you?

5. Curiosity pitch: This type of headline has been hugely successful for websites like Upworthy. A curiosity pitch title looks like the following:

My family stopped high fiving for one year and this is what happened.

This type of headline gives you just enough information to be interested, but leaves you hanging (and curious!). Once you’re left hanging, the only way to get the rest of the story is to click the link to the blog post.

Here’s how you might write a curiosity pitch:

Imagine you are going to tell somebody a story. Then, think about how you would start that story, but in a way that makes the person ask… “what happened next!?”

Conclusion:

A good title can make or break how successful your blog posts are. The best way to get better at writing compelling headlines that strike up a potential reader’s curiosity is to practice, tweak, and get as close as you can to figuring out a formula that works best for you.