New media operation: 8 minefields in title creation!

Recently, I often see friends in the background leaving messages asking us if we have any tips on writing titles.

Of course there is. The title-generating methods we have been using are all in this article "If you want to increase your readership, just read this article." It is said that copying it 10 times will have miraculous effects.

But don’t worry, today I want to share with you my experience of causing a sharp drop in readership due to a poorly written title, as well as the 8 minefields in title writing that I have summarized from these experiences.

I hope my friends can avoid taking detours when coming up with titles.

1. Deviation from positioning

The title cannot deviate from the positioning of the official account.

I once wrote an article titled "I made my boss so mad that he vomited blood with just one article". It received a lot of likes and the comments section was full of positive comments, but the number of readers was very low.

I remember there were five titles in total:

Later, I chose the title "I made my boss so angry that he vomited blood with just one article."

At that time, I thought that this was a practical article. If I highlighted the copywriting in the title, the audience would be limited and only people who read the copywriting would read it.

In order to reach the target audience, you can expand the audience to the workplace and change it to "make the boss mad as hell"; and use entertaining titles to arouse readers' interest.

As a result, the article went wrong after it was published. Later we saw the message from fan @张永强 and realized that we had gone off track.

Our official account mainly outputs useful information. This kind of entertaining title deviates from our positioning and may easily cause users to be disgusted if used too much.

Wouldn’t it be better if it became “A bloody and tearful summary: the 7 most common mistakes in writing”?

To give another example, we previously had an article titled "Weibo's Millions of Red Packets Are Coming, and It Hides a User Retention Strategy." The opening rate of this article hit a new low.

Because the same mistake was made, the first half of the sentence went seriously off track, revealing a strong advertising flavor. Would it be better if it was changed to "User retention strategy used by Alipay and Weibo"?

2. No promises to readers

If you can make a promise to readers in the title and tell them what they can gain from reading your article, then the number of readers of this article will definitely not be low.

Let's look at an example:

We once published an article titled "Former Xiaohongshu employee reveals: 7 copywriting tricks that increase sales dramatically." The number of readers of this article hit a new high, nearly twice the usual number, but the process of coming up with the title was still quite bumpy.

The two possible titles at first were:

① "What is the difference between ordinary copywriting and Xiaohongshu's copywriting?"

② "Xiaohongshu's 7 copywriting routines have led to a surge in sales"

When Xian Ge saw this, he got angry:

“The first title is too bad. For a useful article, you need to give readers promises, such as a surge in sales or conversion rates, so that users will be willing to click.”

“The second title is acceptable, but it’s still not good enough because many people may not believe the result.”

Later, Brother Xian instructed us:

“This article is the result of my communication with the internal staff of Xiaohongshu. You can add the words “former Xiaohongshu employee broke the news” in front of it to make the result credible.

In addition, the word "leaking information" is a big plus, instantly giving readers a feeling of inside information and arousing their curiosity. ”

3. Use numbers that readers have no idea about

Including numbers in the title can be said to be an essential skill in writing a title. But using numbers that readers have no idea about is bound to backfire.

We have previously written an article about disassembling a certain public account, and we plan to use some data to show that the data of this public account is very impressive.

Later, we listed 4 data: 40% open rate, 100,000+ views per article, 360,000 followers increased in 2 weeks, and an average of 20,000+ likes .

Finally, we chose "open rate 40%, average likes 20,000+" . The title is "Open rate 40%, average likes 20,000+, Mimi Meng was counterattacked by her own small account! ”, which has three times the number of readers as the average article.

Why choose these 2 data?

Because this public account is Mi Meng's small account, and it uses Mi Meng to direct traffic, and each article has over 100,000 views, but it's actually not that impressive.

Besides, readers have no idea about the increase of 360,000 followers in 2 weeks and don’t think the increase is fast. The opening rate is 40%, and the average number of likes is over 20,000, which is what makes this account better than Mimi Meng.

4. Give readers a sense of high barriers to entry

What does it mean that the threshold for title is too high? After reading it, the readers have this feeling: the title sounds impressive, but I feel like I didn’t learn anything.

Let’s look at an example:

"What did she do to get offers from five major companies including Tencent and Huawei in one go?" 》

This title gives people the impression that the protagonist is very awesome, and readers will think that she must be very awesome. There is nothing to learn from reading such an article.

Later, after Brother Xian’s correction, it became "How did this newbie make a comeback and get offers from Tencent and Huawei?" ”, which has a good readership.

The title reflects that this is a story of a newbie's counterattack, so people will not feel that the threshold is very high. Instead, they will feel that the methods in the article are replicable.

So how do we avoid high barriers? There are 2 solutions here:

(1) It shows that the protagonist is just an ordinary person or a newbie.

(2) Add words that make people feel that the threshold to entry is low, such as simple to learn, easy to use, and replicable.

Just like we have an article that disassembles Xiaohongshu’s content operation strategy, the final title highlights that it is easy to use and can be replicated: "Behind the popularity of Xiaohongshu, there is a replicable content operation strategy"

5. The title is irrelevant to the reader

The title should be strongly related to the user, so that readers feel it is related to them.

We have previously written an article analyzing Tencent’s revival of Weishi. At the time, we were thinking of this title: “Tencent is recruiting on a large scale, is Douyin facing a crisis? 》

Brother Xian asked me coldly:

"What does the crisis of TikTok have to do with me? That's something TikTok should be concerned about. If I were a reader, I wouldn't even click in."

Later we thought that Tencent had revived Weishi and opened up a large number of positions, and our users were also sensitive to "job hopping for salary increase", so we decided to join large companies as our entry point.

It was eventually changed to "This may be your best chance to join Tencent in the past two years", and the number of readers of this article was 1.5 times the usual amount.

6. Obscure titles

The title should not be obscure and difficult to understand. The readers should know what you are talking about at a glance.

Let’s look at an example:

We have previously published an article about Qutoutiao.

At the beginning, I used two metaphors in the title, "Kuaishou in the information industry" and "Tik Tok in the journalism industry", thinking that readers would definitely be curious, who is the Kuaishou in the information industry and the Tik Tok in the journalism industry?

As a result, the editor-in-chief was confused and said, "This is too roundabout. It directly sets two hurdles for readers!"

Later I changed the title to: "Will Toutiao lose to Kuaishou in the information industry? 》

But I made another mistake, which has nothing to do with the readers. They don’t care about the life-and-death battle between Toutiao and Kuaishou, so the number of readers on that day was only 4K+.

Later, Brother Xian thought of a title: "Tencent invested 200 million US dollars in an app that made old men and women addicted to the Internet." Isn't it easy to understand and can arouse everyone's curiosity?

7. Title homogeneity

When following hot topics, it is important to highlight the differences in your articles.

For example, there was a major revision of the WeChat subscription account, and other public accounts were all posting messages like “WeChat has made a major revision, some people are going to lose their jobs or go to jail.”

They all describe this incident, highlighting the anxiety of the operators.

We wondered if we could differentiate the title. It just so happened that the third part of the article was about how to deal with this revision, so we used the title "WeChat has a major revision, how should we respond?" 》This title.

By providing a direct solution, this article stood out from the crowd of repetitive hot articles and received nearly three times the usual number of views.

8. No keywords or keywords are placed at the end

There should be eye-catching words, and these words should be placed in the front to quickly catch the reader's attention.

I was almost kicked out of the operation agency because I didn’t put the keywords in the front. Do you know why my boss said the title got negative points?

The answer is that the keyword "WeChat" has no prefix.

Later, I changed the title to "WeChat quietly launched a new feature, hiding a user growth routine", and the number of readers was 1.5 times that of an ordinary article.

9. Summary

These are the experiences in title writing that I have summarized with blood and tears. I hope that my friends can avoid detours after reading them . Here are 8 pitfalls you should avoid when writing titles:

(1) Deviating from the positioning of the official account

(2) No promises given to readers

(3) Using numbers that readers have no idea about

(4) Set a high threshold so that readers feel they cannot learn

(5) Being out of touch with users and not being relevant to them

(6) Obscure and difficult to understand

(7) Homogenization

(8) There are no keywords, or the keywords are not prefixed

Related reading:

1. Golden title writing skills for new media operations!

2. 5 tips for choosing titles for public account operations!

3. Strategies for creating 10w+ article titles for new media operations!

4. Tik Tok promotion strategy, how to come up with a Tik Tok title?

5. Write the title of Xiaohongshu promotion notes like this, and the exposure rate will increase dramatically!

6. Event operation: 6 common types of event link title copywriting!

Author: Operation Research Society

Source: Operation Research Society (ID: U_quan)