A simple trick to quickly increase your title open rate!

No matter what I say.

No matter how good the content of the article is, the title directly determines whether the user will click on your article.

Or it determines whether the user will continue to read on.

This has been the case from the print media era decades ago to today's social media .

There are many recognized and proven techniques for writing a title:

For example, you can create suspense and curiosity, be related to "sex", be related to "me", include conflict, use specific numbers, describe details, chase hot topics and hang out with rich people, use Zhihu style, use comparison, stimulate pain points, provide solutions, and highlight benefits;

Create an atmosphere of urgency, emphasize scarcity, indicate the region, promise value, use endorsements from big Vs , list collections, add modifiers before and after, imply danger, provide guidance and suggestions, directly indicate the beneficiaries, stimulate emotions... and so on.

The purpose is nothing more than: to make readers interested in clicking on the article.

The functions are: attracting attention, generating curiosity, stimulating interest, stimulating desire, resonating emotions, guiding actions, etc.

When users quickly browse numerous headlines every day, they basically make decisions quickly, either clicking or not clicking, without any rational and precise analysis involved.

Therefore, whether users ultimately click on your title is a fleeting thing. If you cannot stimulate their “crawling brain” and make them make a decision immediately, then there will be no follow-up.

Speaking of this, let me first give you some general knowledge:

As we all know, all our behaviors are controlled by the brain. Neuroscientist Paul McLean once proposed the hypothesis of "three major human brains". According to the order of evolution, the human brain can be divided into three different functional areas:

The reptilian brain - the primitive brain, controls almost all human desires and instincts such as eating, sex, pleasure, etc., and also controls most of human decision-making. It is foolish, impulsive, short-sighted, and craves immediate gratification.

The limbic system - the emotional brain, including the hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdala, controls a person's emotions, feelings and long-term memory, and it is emotional.

Neocortex - the rational brain, including the left and right cerebral hemispheres, controls all "advanced" functions such as thinking, logic, language, imagination, etc.

Due to evolutionary reasons, these brains operate independently and simultaneously, but the reptilian brain controls most daily decisions, especially some unimportant decisions. Decisions that need to be made immediately are basically made by it. Just like seeing the title decides whether to click in.

It does not perform complex analysis, but makes decisions instinctively based on some basic information and desires.

For example, when we see a handsome man or a beautiful woman, we will naturally look over there; when we see pictures of delicious food, we will think it tastes particularly good; when we see something that everyone is talking about, we will believe it, and so on, all of these do not require rational analysis.

Regarding the brain problem, the previous article has also discussed it in detail. If you are interested, you can take a look.

Back to the title, in fact, when we read the title of an article, it is basically the reptilian brain and the limbic system that make the decision. For example, the verified title techniques mentioned above are mainly about "controlling" the reptilian brain and the limbic system.

The immediate visual impact affects us at first reaction.

This leads to the fact that rational and complex analysis can basically not solve the title problem. What we need is to extract one or more exciting points and present them intuitively in the title, which can immediately stimulate the user's reptilian brain and limbic system.

To put it simply, the title needs to contain multiple keywords that can directly stimulate the reptilian brain. No analysis is required and it will give you an "electric shock" at first glance. I call it a headline buzzer.

Nowadays, many titles like to use prefixes and suffixes, such as collection, recommendation, practical information , etc. These are all trigger words.

You can take a look at the title of the web page I captured below and get a feel for those explosive words.

Are there always some triggering words that arouse your desire to click?

The role of these triggering words is, on the one hand, to highlight the highlights of the content, attract the user's attention, and make him subconsciously (actually controlled by the reptilian brain) have the urge to click.

On the other hand, it actually amplifies the effect of the title techniques mentioned at the beginning of the article. (Those title tricks at the beginning of the article are actually to deal with the stupid reptile brain)

Therefore, many books, self-media and even institutions have specifically studied which keywords will increase the click-through rate of titles and which words will reduce the click-through rate of titles.

Therefore, the new advertising law that shocked the advertising industry last year also focused on cracking down on a number of extreme words. It is these words that are most likely to influence our reptilian brain, causing us to make decisions without knowing it.

Therefore, many of our popular article titles are like this:

What is the difference between a copywriter earning 3,000 yuan a month and one earning 30,000 yuan a month?

Why is a Japanese elementary school student's schoolbag worth 5,000 yuan each?

Don’t eat this thing, you will understand after seeing it! Please enter with caution!

10 awesome Chinese products that are sold out by foreigners!

Luo Zhenyu : Is there anything more dignified than making money?

These titles contain multiple triggering words that directly make our reptilian brain make the decision to click. Greatly increase the reading volume of the content, there are some interesting phenomena:

That is, the number of readers and opens of the original author's articles are not that high after they are published, while after other self-media change the titles, the number of readers soars and they receive a lot of positive reviews. "Trigger words" played an important role in this.

Then, here comes the trick to quickly boost your title click rate:

Split the keywords in your title, remove useless auxiliary words and adverbs, and see if you can directly hit the "crawling brain" and encourage clicks.

Let me give you an example, so that you don’t have to bother using your “neocortex” rational brain to understand.

For example, "What is it like to give up a high salary, a beautiful wife, and a big house and go to the mountains to be a savage?"

This title can be broken down into: "Give up, high salary, beautiful wife, big house, go to the mountains, savage". In my opinion, these are all triggering words, all of which are designed to create conflict and arouse curiosity.

For example, "The most fatal mistakes made by 10 bigwigs including Robin Li , Zhou Hongyi, and Jack Ma ."

The title can be broken down into: "Robin Li, Zhou Hongyi, Jack Ma, 10 digits, fatal, error", which uses suspense triggering words, number triggering words and celebrity triggering words.

Another example is "Internal emails from XX company exposed! Boycott this black-hearted company in the future!"

The title can be broken down into: "internal, exposed, black-hearted enterprise". These words are particularly eye-catching and are typical of the revealing type.

Here comes another one: "China's first! The frozen body of a famous female writer from Chongqing is waiting to be resurrected after 50 years!"

The title can be broken down into: "The first case, famous female writer, frozen body, 50 years, resurrection". Each one of them is attractive and powerful, and it would be fine even if a few of them were reduced, for example: The first case in China! The body of a female writer from Chongqing is frozen and waiting to be resurrected!

After breaking down these titles, you can recite them silently and feel them. Finally, I’ll leave you with one question: you can take a look at what triggering words are used in this title and what is the purpose?

"Because of him, Zhou Enlai smoked the only cigarette in his life. Chairman Mao ordered that anyone who met this person should be killed without mercy!

So, we always say that it takes 100 tries to come up with a good title. So when we come up with a good title, we might as well split the title, extract its triggering words, see if it is strong enough, and also recite it silently to see if there will be interest.

Therefore, our focus should be on making rational use of each triggering word to achieve the desired title effect. And in my opinion, this technique is more suitable for testing the attractiveness of the title. We can test it after writing the title.

See if there are some trigger words in your title that will attract the user's "crawling brain".

Of course, a good headline isn't all about catching eyes or getting clicks.

A good title can attract attention and make users interested in clicking, but a title that attracts attention is not necessarily a good title.

It could also be a clickbait title .

Therefore, your title should not only be able to attract users, but also comply with the 4C rule, otherwise it is likely to go astray.

1) The content corresponding to your title is what the target users like. The title determines the overall exposure of the content, and the content also determines the quality of the title;

2) Your title is based on your target users. “Other people’s kids” may not be suitable for you. Instead, other people’s methods are what you need to learn more.

3) Your title depicts a face-to-face communication scene in life, which is an exchange with the target users. So first you have to confirm what kind of person you want to portray, and then consider how to chat with such a specific person;

4) Your title needs to use various techniques/emotions/feelings/human nature, etc. to create topics that can attract people to start chatting. Don’t kill the topic right at the beginning, otherwise you may end up with a “dumb” conversation.

This 4C rule of title is just what I summarized based on experience. It is not a magic trick for titles, but it can be used as a reference.

For details, please see " Say Goodbye to Junk Headlines! What I understand as a good title should be like this (summary of experience) 》

After checking and optimizing the title, the next step is the content of the article itself. The content must of course be good. I won’t go into details about this. Today I will mainly talk about the title.

However, after we finish writing the article, we also need to check our copy carefully. Sometimes 0-70 points is difficult, but 70-90 points is much easier and it may be achievable if you check more details.

You can also try the following article self-examination method (more suitable for product copywriting or advertising):

1) Does this copy directly hit the user’s pain points, stimulate human nature, and mobilize emotions?

2) How many pain points are addressed in your article? (If you mention too many pain points, it means there are no pain points. This is like: when a person has too many shortcomings, it is better to just give up.)

3) Is your statement straightforward and simple? In particular, are the key parts explained in a simple and easy-to-understand way?

4) Can you briefly describe the overall context or logic of your article? That is, summarize what you wrote, what you wanted to express, and what purpose you wanted to achieve in the simplest words.

5) Is the solution to the pain point you mentioned the biggest advantage or differentiation of your product? Or can your product or content solve this pain point?

6) Will users take the action you want them to take immediately after reading the article? If not, then is it because the writing is not sharp enough, or is there no action guide?

7) If the user is impulsive to take action, is there any icing on the cake, or is there a final touch to completely impress the user?

8) Does your writing read coherently? Is it too lengthy? Can it be shortened?

9) What kind of emotion will be ignited in the user's heart after reading the article? That is: emotional resonance. Have you anticipated this user emotion in advance? And is this emotion highly contagious?

10) After reading your article, do you have any reason to share it with your friends? For example, this is really interesting and we want more people to enjoy it too.

Okay, that’s all for now.

Writing articles is difficult, and writing titles is also difficult, but in comparison, checking titles and articles is much easier. This is a 70-90 point process.

There is no shortcut to this thing, and doing more and checking more may be the fastest way. It would be a pity not to do it!

Bacon once said something, which I would like to share with you:

Life is like a road. The closest shortcut is usually the worst.

Life is like a road, the shortest shortcut is usually the worst way.

Okay, then the old rules apply, if you can collect it, collect it, if you can like it, like it, and if you can share it, share it, so that I can know about it.

above!