Headlines are the most important few words that you write.

Effective headlines aren’t just attention-grabbing – they’re promises. They tell your reader what to expect and why it’s worth their time. They can make or break a post. Yet writing headlines tends to be left to the end of the writing process when creativity and clear thinking may be at a low ebb.

Just think about how you scan the content of magazines and newspapers, book titles at the bookshop, and online social media streams. There are lots of choices and limited time. So your brain takes as many shortcuts as possible to spot the most interesting things. It wants to understand the topic, establish its relevance, and assess what it will get if it dives in.

Essentially, your headline is how you sell your post.

And the evidence is that a good headline can make a huge difference to engagement:

• A study of Washington Post and Upworthy stories showed that readers are much more likely to click on simple headlines than complex ones
• A/B testing by Nieman Lab found that experimenting with headlines boosted engagement rates by 20% on average

There are plenty of 80/20 rules in digital media, and headline writing is one of them – received wisdom is that only 20% of people will read past your headline (see more data on headline use below). Those who have studied what kind of headlines work best have found a relatively small set of things busy users need.

The 5 Rules of Good Headline Writing

1. Write the Headline Before You Write the Post

This forces you to clarify what you’re really saying, and it keeps you focused while writing. If you can’t summarise your idea in one compelling line, you may need to rethink your angle. Don’t be coy. Readers are scanning for relevance. Use your headline to signal the topic clearly, so your ideal audience knows it’s for them.

It may be that in the process of writing you change your mind about the angle, in which case you will need to change the headline. And it may happen more than once.

Well-known authors tend to fall into one of two storytelling groups – those who structure their story before they start, and those that let it emerge more organically. Online content needs to fulfill so many requirements that you really need to begin at the end.

2. Explain What the Post is About

The trick is to make it clear what subject is being addressed. But don’t give away the whole story. In other words, open a loop that will pique interest and close it towards the end of your post to keep your reader reading.

Vague: The Importance of a Good Headline

Clear: How to Write Irresistible Headlines: 6 Ways to Captivate Readers

3. Be Clear About Who You Are Writing For

You are aiming for ‘relatability‘. This means framing content so that it provides something your target reader needs. Remember that every reader is wary of their time being wasted and is thinking, ‘Is this really for me?’ Some experts recommend naming your target readers in your headline.

Generic: How to Improve Your Writing

Targeted: Online Editors: 14 Simple Ways to Engage Your Busy Readers

4. Never over-promise

We’ve all been there – clicked on an intriguing headline and then been disappointed when the content doesn’t deliver on the promise. That’s poor practice and a good way to get a bad reputation.

Over-promising: The Only Headline Formula You’ll Ever Need

Honest: 6 Reliable Ways to Make Your Headlines More Compelling

5. Use interesting, accessible language

Some words are more appealing than others. The quote from David Ogilvy at the top is important. Good headline-writers think like advertising copywriters and write and rewrite until their headlines pop. Some writers use the concept of ‘power words’ – those designed to trigger a strong emotional response.

Jargon-heavy: How to Leverage Strategic Communications Paradigms

Accessible: Write Headlines That Actually Get Clicked

Examples of effective headline structures, why they work, and how to use AI to brainstorm

Headline writing is a creative activity. Some find it simple to come up with good ones. Most of us find it tough. The good news is that there are recipes that work. Better still, the advent of GenAI tools like ChatGPT and Bing Copilot means you can brainstorm approaches until you find something that zings.

I will work through the headline structures that work best for me, how they relate to the rules of good headline writing, and explain the process I use to get started. Most of this is also relevant to writing copy for social posts.

1. Ask a Question

Everything you write is essentially the answer to a question (or a series of related questions) and one of the best ways of conveying this to a busy reader is to pose the question in your headline.

My first attempt for this piece was ‘How Do I Write Effective Headlines?’ This is an accurate description of what the piece tries to do. It was the search query I typed into Google when researching the topic. But it’s a bit dull. The language is extremely plain. And it lacks relatability.

I tried to inject some intrigue with ‘What’s the Secret Sauce Behind Headlines that Really Cut Through?’ Since almost everyone finds writing headlines tricky this is more relatable – who wouldn’t want to be told the secrets of doing something difficult. And it’s concise too. Grammarly told me it would be better without the ‘really’. But I like the conversational tone it helps to project. The problem is ‘cut through’. It’s active, which is good, but it’s a term used by communications professionals and could be considered jargon, and it’s not clear what is being cut through, so it risks confusing readers.

For my third attempt, I went for maximum engagement and asked Bing Copilot to look at a draft and act like a sub-editor for Buzzfeed. Among its suggestions was this: Want to Write Headlines that Break the Internet? Read This!

I love this – classic Buzzfeed hyperbole. But it’s too tongue-in-cheek for me. And it breaks the rule about not over-promising.

2. How To

The ‘How To’ headline is the sister to ‘Ask a Question’ – it answers rather than asks.

One of the challenges of writing good headlines is that the brain tends to get stuck on certain frames. Having begun the brainstorming with the question approach, I found it hard to think of new frames and my first attempt was ‘This is How to Write Effective Headlines‘.

Functional, but a bit lacklustre.

One of the undervalued aspects of Generative AI is its ability to rip off your mental blinkers by suggesting different approaches. I asked Bing Copilot for suggestions for ‘how to’ headlines for my piece and it gave me a series of two-clause suggestions. Combining the best of two gave me, ‘How to Write Irresistible Headlines: 5 Tips for Captivating Readers‘.

It’s quite a big claim but I thought the material was strong enough and had the results to prove the tactics worked. The Headline ticks all the boxes:

• Relatable: It resonates with anyone who has ever had that question
• Concise: The core of the headline is short and simple
• Helpful: The promise is to provide an answer
• Interesting language: Who doesn’t want to be irresistible and captivating?

3. The Listicle

There’s something about listicles that appeals to our lazy brains. They promise an easy-to-read structure, which is attractive to people who’ve clicked on links and wasted time on confusing posts.

This article comprises two listicles: 5 Ways to Write Headlines That Captivate Readers and 9 Effective Headline Formats. I’ve incorporated the former in my compound headline structure but could have used the latter instead. Or either could have been used on its own.

However, I use a lot of listicles, and they’re starting to look a bit predictable on my blog.

4. This/These

Headlines that start with this/these strike a confident tone that is attractive to users who don’t like vagueness. They also convey simplicity – this one thing is crucial, or just these few things matter.

My working headline for this piece was, These are the Secrets to Writing Headlines that Readers Will Actually Click.

Again, Grammarly objects to the unnecessary addition of ‘actually’ but in my experience the more conversational the headline, the better it performs.

‘These are the Secrets’ is a FOMO (fear of missing out) structure designed to intrigue. But the ‘How to’ headline I’ve chosen is both more informative and shorter.

5. Pain-free benefits

From the world of digital storytelling comes the idea of the basic narrative arc – a character facing a conflict and overcoming obstacles to resolve it. For decades, advertising copywriters have been exploiting this simple but magnetic story structure. The logic is that people have problems to solve but limited resources, including their own time.

My starting point was, These Simple Guidelines Will Help You Write Irresistible Headlines without Wasting Valuable Time.

It felt a bit wordy and obvious, so I asked ChatGPT to have a look at the post and suggest headlines that followed the pain-free benefit structure. As ever, what come back was awkward, but with a minor tweak I got, Effortlessly Boost Your Engagement with These Simple Headline Tricks.

This works, but it’s still a bit clumsy.

6. The Shocking Stat

A fascinating factoid is another good way of jolting online users out of their default state of indifference towards content. But it does need a strong element of surprise.

Measured by real-world impact, the most successful headline during my time at the World Economic Forum was a Media Release: More Plastic than Fish in the Ocean by 2050: Report Offers Blueprint for Change

That’s not a very friendly headline but it’s aimed at hard-nosed journalists. The key is the data point, which attracted enormous media coverage and went on to be cited in parliamentary debates across the globe.

Sometimes, the strongest card you have to play is a statistic. And this is particularly true of in-depth reports where gems can lay undiscovered in the detail.

Back to this article. I did a bit of fact-checking but could find no evidence to back up the frequently cited stat from David Ogilvy. There are some interesting related factoids but nothing strong enough.

For the sake of completeness, here’s what the headline could have been: Just 1 in 5 will get past this headline, but read on for more data-driven insights on writing great headlines.

7. Contradictions

If you set up a conflict between two parts of a headline, you create a puzzle that brains instinctively want to solve.

The best result of a headline experiment at the World Economic Forum was this:

Original headline: Without Equality of Income There Can Be No Equality of Opportunity.

Revised headline: You’re More Likely to Achieve the American Dream If You Live in Denmark.

The revised headline draws on a line in the article and generated 10x the views of the original.

For this piece I combined several of the earlier approaches:

Your Headline is Your First Priority. So Why is it the Last Thing You Write?

8. The Command

Pure instructions can work. They project extreme confidence, which is attractive to some, dictatorial to others.

Headlines Are Your Most Important Words. So Stop Treating Them as an Afterthought.

9. Entity X is Doing Thing Y to Deal With a Problem Like Z

This was a firm favourite at WEF, which aims to tackle global challenges and make the world a better place. Those are laudable if abstract goals. What readers want are solid examples of practical solutions.

My favourite example is Guatemala is Stopping Trash Entering the Sea By Using Special Plastic-catching Barriers, which was a video rather than a blog post.

For this article, a headline of this type might read, ‘Leading Publishers are Stopping the Scroll with Super-smart Headlines‘.

Final headline-writing tips

• Test 3-5 headline options for every post
• Read your headline out loud: does it sound natural?
• Ask: would I click this if I saw it in a newsletter or search result?