Practical Tips | 4 steps to create a copywriting title that doubles the readership!

How should the title be written? What psychological states of readers does a good title capture? How to check it after writing it? The author of this article answers each question one by one.

A title is to a copywriter what a person’s face is to him.

When two people meet for the first time on a blind date, neither of them wants to sit opposite a sloppy-looking person, no matter how high his social reputation and status are. A bad first impression will result in the loss of most of your goodwill. So you always have to dress yourself up nicely before going out. Similarly, why don’t you spend more time dressing your copy in a beautiful and attractive coat?

Today is the era of mobile Internet , and we are exposed to huge amounts of information every day. WeChat , Weibo and major portals are already overwhelming. The homepage of Jianshu alone has two hundred articles, and it is constantly being updated. Readers need to decide whether to read the article in the blink of an eye. It's like seeing a beautiful woman walking towards you on the street. You only need to take a quick glance to know whether you are interested in her. So no matter how informative your article is, how unique your views are, or how profound your thoughts are, if you don’t have a good title to attract readers, the article will most likely fall into oblivion.

How should the title be written? What psychological states of readers does a good title capture? How to check it after writing it? Next, let’s analyze them one by one.

1. Specific steps for writing titles

1. Framework structure, keyword summary

The first step in advertising is to understand the product. Similarly, the title is a general summary of the main idea of ​​the whole article. Usually when we are conceiving an article, we need to think about its framework first, and then list the keywords.

For example, this article I wrote about the four steps of writing copy titles and the five psychological factors of readers when reading. “4 steps” and “5 mentalities” are my keywords. Of course, there are also some narrative articles, in which case you need to grasp the central idea or the part you want to emphasize.

Be careful not to have a title that is too big, resulting in the content of the article not matching the title. For example, "How to Earn Your First Ten Million in Life". The title is indeed very attractive, but after reading the article carefully, there is no specific method to achieve this goal. This is what we often call clickbait. On the contrary, although the content of the article is very good and profound, the title is inconspicuous and readers will not click in to read it, which is also a pity.

We first list the main keywords and meanings of the article, and then optimize it according to the following steps.

2. Identify your audience

Whether it is advertising copy or articles, you must consider the audience's reading habits, feelings, psychological factors, and other factors, and consider the issue from the reader's perspective.

The more specific the audience positioning is, the better. You also need to put yourself in their shoes and consider what they care about, what they hope to get, what tone of voice will be most likely to bring you closer to them and win their trust, what they fear, and so on.

For example, if your article readers are mainly middle-aged people, you can easily attract their attention by using topics about children; the elderly are more concerned about how to keep themselves healthy and free from disease and disaster; when facing girls born in the 1990s, a literary tone will be more to their liking; if your target audience is rebellious young people, you need to understand their behavior, or speak in their tone.

Of course, when dealing with people from different industries and professions, it is also necessary to communicate according to each other's habits and language. For example, when facing programmers and lawyers, who are generally science majors, you need to use more logical and complete language in the title. If you are talking to a designer, you may need to use some professional terms or express yourself in more delicate language.

3. Type combinations are more powerful

Once you have determined the main keywords and target audience of the article, you need to choose some of the title types mentioned above to attract your readers. You’ll find that most attractive headlines don’t fall into just one category, but are a combination of multiple types.

For example, "How can I dress to make my breasts look bigger?" 》This title contains both questioning and sexual elements, and is also beneficial to the target audience. Such an article title is obviously more attractive.

Another example is "The little-known secret weapon of trading will help you make more than 5 times the profit." First of all, 5 times makes "profit" more specific, and "little-known" fully arouses the readers' curiosity, while also allowing readers to relate to their own interests. Just imagine, would you refuse to let yourself make a profit?

So try to combine these 8 basic title types in your titles as much as possible, and you will get unexpected results.

4. Final revision

Any good title is the result of careful consideration and repeated revisions.

After we have completed the first three steps, we need to modify our title, consider whether the wording is reasonable, and whether there are any unnecessary words that need to be deleted.

For example, "It will be deleted within 2 hours, please read it quickly! ”, “delete within 2 hours” already has a sense of urgency, and “check it out quickly” seems a bit redundant. It would be better to change it to “must be deleted within 2 hours”, which is more concise and powerful.

For example, "I like people who are serious about buying houses." Logically speaking, it's correct! After all, buying a house is a big deal, shouldn’t you take it seriously? But if it is changed to "I like picky people when buying houses", the effect will be much better. Changing "serious" to "picky" will make readers feel that this is in conflict with normal cognition. It also expresses the meaning of seriousness, and it will be more attractive after the modification.

The title needs to truly adhere to the principle of "a word is worth a thousand gold".

2. Titles need to understand the four psychological aspects of readers

Through the above 8 types of titles and 4 writing steps, we can basically summarize the four major psychological characteristics of readers that a good title needs to understand:

1. Selfishness

Drew Eric Whitman said in "Ads That Make Money":

Put the biggest benefit of your product in the title.

Whether readers are learning about a product or reading an article, they will subconsciously think: How can this help me? If readers glance at the title and feel it has nothing to do with them, they will continue to browse other articles. So, first of all, you have to tell the reader what benefits he can get after reading your article.

For example, "What is the difference between a monthly salary of 3,000 and a monthly salary of 30,000?" When reading, readers must be thinking about how the copywriter who earns a monthly salary of 30,000 does it and what I can learn from him. For example, when reading "How to Avoid Mistakes When Building a House", readers must be thinking about what mistakes they need to pay attention to, otherwise they will suffer losses. This is selfishness.

2. Herd mentality

Think back, when you first heard a new Internet term, did you go to Baidu first? Because we are always worried that we cannot keep up with the pace of the times, especially in this era of information explosion. This is actually a kind of herd mentality. We are afraid of being left out, afraid of being embarrassed because we don’t know something when everyone is talking about it. So you often see "If you don't learn XXX, you'll be out!" on the Internet. 》, and it always attracts readers.

Pursuing news and hot events is also a manifestation of herd mentality, such as Wang Baoqiang’s divorce, Luo Yixiao’s incident, and Edison Chen’s sex photo scandal. If you don’t understand the background, you will often be confused and have no idea what everyone is talking about. The reason why many people follow hot topics is simple: because people around them are following it!

The herd mentality is the biggest reason why articles that follow hot topics have a high readership.

3. Shortcuts to success

Each of us wants to take fewer detours and take some shortcuts. We always hope to achieve success with the help of other people’s successful experiences. Although most people cannot succeed, this does not hinder the popularity of such articles.

But when we face articles such as "How I made 1 million using this method" and "There is no need to take so many detours to succeed", we are always immune.

We can also use it cleverly when writing titles, but be careful not to become a title party!

4. Curiosity

As mentioned in the previous section, curiosity is the only way to get readers to click on your article. Many news and revealing columns take advantage of people's curiosity. In addition to the previously mentioned words such as "truth", "revelation", "behind" in the title, we can also use these two methods to arouse readers' curiosity.

• One is to reveal the secrets behind those people and events that were originally well known to the public, such as "Uncovering the Hidden Rules of Wall Street."
• The second is that it is inconsistent with common perception. For example, when you see a title on Alipay : "I encountered Wang Sicong driving a bus in Hangzhou", it is obviously inconsistent with the public's perception of Wang Sicong, and curiosity is aroused at this time.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media ASO source

This article was compiled and published by @Amateur Copywriter ( Qinggua Media ). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!