9 steps to write a good title quickly!

Anyone who is engaged in operations knows the importance of titles. A good title can significantly increase your click-through rate . Therefore, in order to increase click-through rates, everyone is constantly "making up" various titles. It's okay to think about this kind of thing occasionally, but if you do it too often, you'll be driven crazy.

Sometimes I get so tired of writing and changing titles that I feel like throwing up.

Today I saw an article about writing titles that did not talk about general principles but focused on methodology. In order to consolidate my learning results, I tried to translate it based on my own understanding and share it with you.

1. Don’t treat title writing as “writing an essay”

You don’t need to pay too much attention to grammar, sentence structure, logic, and literary talent, which are the writing issues that our high school Chinese teachers emphasized. The title has its own characteristics.

2. Write the title last

Many people say that you should think of the title first when you write copy and design the page. I have a different opinion. It doesn’t mean that you should write the copy and design the page first, and then come back to summarize a title after it is completed. This way you can easily get lost in the tedious details. You have to write a "title" at the beginning, but the "title" written at this time is not the final one, it is rougher and has more words.

For example, if you are doing a Double 11 promotion, at the beginning you only need to write something like "Double 11 promotion once a year, annual fee is 50% off to only 99, buy 2 years at one time and get 1 more year free". It is used to help you design the following copy and pages, and you can rewrite it at the end.

The purpose of this is to get you started as soon as possible, so that you don't get stuck on a few 10 words for a long time, which results in a lot of work being unable to be carried out later.

3. The title only needs to please 20-35% of the main users

Users are of all kinds. When I organized activities in the past, even though I made it clear, there were still some weird users who had weird understandings. So I kept revising it, the text became longer and longer, and the readers became less and less patient.

You want to please everyone and attract everyone, but in the end no one likes you.

For example, during the Double 11 promotion, you can choose to design titles for these people:

• Already familiar with your product;
• Those who have a favorable impression of this type of product and are willing to try it;
• Because I was very happy to find a bargain;
• Willing to spread the news to others.

4.[Important! ]Describe the most attractive point/unique value proposition for users

A title is like a marketing message to your users. Before writing it, you need to understand:

1. Your own unique place
2. What your users need most

Step 4 is the core of writing a good title, and most of your time should be spent on this in title writing. I have a table to help you with this step:

In my example, functional points are not just the functions on the product. Anything that users can perceive, such as promotional information, carefully designed interfaces, and ultimate interactive experience, can all be considered "functional points."

Fill in all the functional points you can think of in the table above. This table will be the basic information for you to refine the title.

5. Write 25 headline candidates

With the information from step 4, you can officially start writing the title.

You can write the title by arranging and combining the characteristics, using exaggeration, short and powerful verbs, metaphors, etc. Write boldly, write at least 25, and don’t worry about whether they are good or bad.

If you find it difficult to write 25, I offer some writing inspiration:

• Replace with synonyms – For example, the word “discount” in “Double 11 50% discount” can be replaced with “fire sale price”, “big sale”, “super discount”, etc.
• To use an analogy – still the same as above, you can use an analogy like “saving money for a karaoke session can make you happy for a year”;
• Steal from your user testimonials – collect the “witty quotes” that users say about your product and then adapt them.
• Steal from press releases and PR articles – collect “witty quotes” written by professional columnists about your product and then modify them;
• Add numbers to the title – for example, “3 reasons to buy Xunlei membership on Double 11”;
• Play humor
• Write equations using titles. Some common equations are:

The Secret of xxxx

Ways to help you xxxx

Little-known xxxx

Ways to get rid of xxxx

A quick way to solve xxxx

Now you can also have xxxx (usually good things)

Do yyyy like xxxx

Everyone should know xxxx

6. Delete obviously inappropriate titles

In order to write 25, you usually write some crappy headlines that just fill the number. However, bad titles are not useless. Sometimes writing them can give you inspiration to write good titles.

At this point, you start deleting titles that are definitely not going to work.

Delete all the ones that are long and boring, too short to be understood, clever and click-getting, using difficult terms, or cannot be understood at first glance. After this step, you may have about 10 options left.

7. Test your titles on real pages

At this point, you can test the effect of the title on the web page or product. Whether there are too many words, whether the line breaks have an impact, whether the font size and color are appropriate, whether it blends in with the overall design, etc. can all be tested in actual situations.

A problem I often talked about with my teammates in the past is that your title is wrapped at low resolution, which is not only unsightly but also causes important information to be ignored. Therefore, testing in a real environment is very important.

After completing this step, you may be left with about 5 candidate titles.

8. Create conditions for AB testing

If you have the conditions, you can conduct a complete AB test to see which title has a higher conversion rate (for example, when doing CPC advertising or web game advertising).

If the conditions are not met, or it is just a small event (such as an internal company event), there is no need to go through so much trouble. You should at least find three friends or colleagues to take a look and ask for their opinions.

Because you have gone through so many steps, you are too familiar with what these titles are talking about. These titles are for strangers, so you should at least let a few passers-by who don’t know much about them take a look and see if they can understand what your title is saying.

Delete what you can't understand and keep what you can understand.

9. You decide which one to use

If there are still 2 or 3 titles left in step 8, you can choose one on your own (if you are an anxiety patient, please flip a coin or use a random number to decide).

If you think these steps are too many, please be sure to take a look at step 4, "Describe the most attractive aspects/unique value proposition for users." Those who have done this step will not write bad titles.