8 practical methods for new media titles!

I only give you 1 second. If you want me to read the article, your title must give me a strong stimulation.

Ordinary titles cannot attract the general public. Only titles with explosive points can catch the audience's attention and get read immediately.

This is a long-term vicious cycle, in which the explosiveness of headlines becomes increasingly prominent and never diminishes; while the audience's thinking becomes increasingly scarce, handing over the decision-making power to the media.

As ordinary people, we should reflect on this. As a new media person, we can only accept it.

After all, no one wants their hard-earned article to have only a few readers because no one clicks on it.

For all readings, likes, and reposts, the title is the first link. Opportunities are fleeting. The times only give you 1 second. If you cannot attract users to click within 1 second, then it will have no chance to get on the stage.

Before, Lao Zei read hundreds of popular headlines from the official recommendations on Toutiao, analyzing them as he went along. Recently, he read a lot of them again and still had a lot of feelings. Today, I will mainly share 8 practical title methods that I have observed. They are durable and reliable!

ps: Why am I reading this on Toutiao? Because the headlines on Toutiao accounts are more direct and important, without any watering down, the number of fans and tone of the account itself have less impact.

1. 10 key points

Before I talk about the method, let me first talk about some facts that I have seen in these hundreds of popular headlines.

What kind of title can quickly attract attention?

There are many points that need to be paid attention to, such as dramatic conflict, use of specific numbers, chasing hot spots and hanging out with wealthy people, use of contrast, stimulating pain points, surprise discounts, highlighting benefits, creating an atmosphere of urgency, directly identifying the beneficiaries, stimulating emotions, creating suspense and curiosity... and so on. too much!

However, the following key points are definitely frequently appearing concepts during my observations and are worth killing a few brain cells on.

1. Closely related to readers, insight into life details, identity labels are important
2. The words are more direct, the tone is stronger, and the emotions are more explosive
3. Curiosity is a human quirk
4. Clear and specific, detailed description, direct benefits
5. Suspense, contradiction, conflict, revelation, conflict, reversal, subversion are eye-catching killers
6. Hot spots, hot spots, hot spots, hot spots are the hot spots
7. Use "I", "you", "TA" more often to make the story touching
8. The angle should be novel, the viewpoint and attitude should be clear, even extreme
9. Long titles can accommodate more eye-catching words
10. The title of the headline account is simple and crude, although it is unbearable

Without further ado, you can pay more attention to the above points in the future. Especially "suspense" and "curiosity", which are simply eye-killers. Below I will give you a lot of examples, please take a look.

2. 8 Practical Title Methods

After reading these popular headlines with relatively high click-through rates and reading volumes, I summarized several highly concentrated headline formats.

No need for extra explanation, you can understand it at a glance. The key is to get a feel for it through cases, and use them as reference coordinates when you write yourself, even if you just apply them.

1. Direct Quotes + Sharp Points

• Chinese dramas with distorted values: No matter how high the ratings are, I have to give them a bad review
• "Joined the company for 12 years, was fired in an instant": The dumbest effort is to be busy without any results
• "Houses are more reliable than men": You can't even imagine the happiness of rich women
• "Why don't you get married": Because low-quality marriage is not as good as high-quality singleness
• "Dear, please help me cut a knife": Your so-called friends are stealing your time

2. Highlights first + create suspense

• Almost all of Steve Jobs' iPhone design team has resigned. How did Apple force designers to leave?
• Minor wounds cost two lives. Doctors remind: 3 types of wounds, no matter how small, you should get tetanus shot
• Super accurate psychological test: What do you see when you first see a picture? Test your innermost secrets
• Before Du Yuesheng went to Hong Kong, he warned one person that he would die if he stayed, but he didn't listen! After Du left, he sneaked back to Shanghai and didn't live for 3 days.
• I switched jobs to a company with a monthly salary of 30,000 yuan, but I regretted it in less than half a year.

3. Ask curious questions and create suspense

• Would you put your parents in a nursing home? Look at the elderly captured by British photographers
• Are people who fart a lot more likely to get colon cancer? Doctor’s Tips: These are the reliable methods for checking colorectal cancer!
• How difficult is it to get married in rural areas? The three old farmer's rhymes express the bitterness and helplessness of many people
• How to steam egg custard without honeycombs? It turns out that the time of putting it into the pot is very important. If done right, it will be more tender and smooth than tofu.
• Who is making the harassing calls starting with 95? Finally found the source, can be blocked like this

4. Subvert stereotypes + use contrast to create suspense

• It was not Liu Bei and Cao Cao who created the chaos of the Three Kingdoms, but a pig butcher, but later generations ignored him.
• When your child kicks off the quilt while sleeping, don’t think it’s because he’s hot! If parents do not pay attention to these two situations, it will affect their development.
• The love story of these two middle-aged men is sweeter than an idol drama
• HR of a large company: What I hate to see most is the “excellent employees” selected from small companies.
• Is it most comfortable for your baby to set the air conditioner to 26 degrees in summer? wrong! How to turn on the air conditioner in summer? Listen to me

5. Challenge cognition + break the routine (say the opposite of what you mean)

• As a mother, I never loved my children.
• I finally accepted that my son was an ordinary child.
• Taiwanese snacks really... taste very ordinary.
• Yes, I am the selfish woman who divorced and doesn’t want children!
• Have you eaten plastic today?

6. Highly insightful ideas/phenomena + direct quotations

• On the 5th day after giving birth, I was admitted to the ICU
• Sorry, what I want is marriage, not targeted poverty alleviation
• Before marriage, "I support you", after marriage, "I support you"
• In my mother's eyes, my life is over.
• “You’re good, but you’re fired.”

7. Hot topics + sharp opinions

• A former colleague with an annual salary of 600,000 yuan is seriously ill. He said frankly: Extreme self-discipline is self-destruction. No matter how hard you work, you must cherish your life.
• 52-year-old Sichuan man took the college entrance examination 23 times, sparking heated discussion: Pointless struggle is a waste of life
• Middle-aged mothers can no longer afford Dior: The competition between women starts from their children's cram schools
• A Nanjing guy fell drunk in a subway station and burst into tears: The adult world is too hard, you need the right to collapse
• The world's popular elderly divorce trend has swept to China: At 65, I can still restart my life

8. Highlights first + stating surprising facts

• 21.8 trillion tons! NASA discovered a dense foreign object near Chang'e 4, which is 6 times larger than Wuhan City
• Zhang Xinyu: An artist who was delayed by acting, her Chinese painting is more professional than the masters
• "Mom, let's get a divorce. Stop pretending!" A letter from a 15-year-old high school girl | True story
• Don’t waste this summer vacation! 8 documentaries to help children learn about astronomy and geography
• The "Break" Post-90s Generation May Be China's Most Mentally Healthy Generation

Please remember three key words: curiosity, suspense, and subversion. In addition, if you look at these titles more often, you will find that there are always one or two keywords in their titles, which quickly attract you, right? My hands were faster than my brain, and I clicked it unconsciously.

This is what I am going to talk about next.

3. 1 core skill

Whether users click on the title or not is definitely a matter of a split second. The most important thing is whether the title can bring impact and whether there is one or more stimulating information in the title that can quickly stimulate the brain.

Therefore, the core skill is that the title needs to contain multiple keywords that can directly stimulate users and make them feel "electrically shocked" at first sight. I always call it a headline buzzer beater.

The role of the trigger word is: on the one hand, it highlights the highlights of the content and attracts the user's attention; on the other hand, it also amplifies the effect of all the above title techniques to make people click immediately.

Many professional books, self-media, and even some super brands will specifically study which keywords will increase the click-through rate of titles and which words will reduce the click-through rate of titles.

Some original articles had average click-through rates when they were first published, but after other platforms optimized the titles when reposting them, the number of readers skyrocketed. This is often where the "trigger word" comes into play.

So here comes a trick to quickly improve the title effect:

First, break down all the keywords in your title and remove useless auxiliary words; then, take a quick look to see if there are one or more triggering words that can immediately stimulate the eye.

For example, " What is it like for him to give up his high salary, beautiful wife, and big house and run to the mountains to become a savage? 》In the title, “high salary, beautiful wife, big house, deep mountains, savages” are all good triggering words.

If it is removed, it might be " What is it like to quit a big company and live in the mountains? 》.

It's not bad, with comparison, contrast and questions, but it lacks a few triggering words, so the appeal is not a bit off.

In short, when choosing a title, you might as well split your title to see if there are any triggering words in the title that can stimulate users. If not, make it up .

Then see whether these refined trigger words are strong enough. If they are not stimulating enough, the trigger words need to be strengthened .

In this way, there will be a pattern to follow, and you won't be completely clueless.

Finally, let me say a little more. Everyone knows that the title is important, but the more important something is, the more time it takes to polish. Methods and techniques are just tools, and any results need to be tested and summarized. The title needs to be taken 100 times, not chicken soup!

If this article is helpful or inspiring to you, please do me a favor and share it with people around you.

Author: Mumu Old Thief

Source: Mumu Laozei

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