I don’t know if you have had similar experiences. Since the first time I wrote an essay, my Chinese teacher often said: “ A good title is half the work. If you have a good title, the beginning of the essay will also stand out .”
My Chinese teacher back then was a literary middle-aged man in his 40s. In every writing class, he would call on students to comment on the title of the model essay, what was good about it, what needed improvement, and then give his own comments. Under his guidance, I still remember the role of the title, such as summarizing the main content of the article, serving as a clue to the article, having symbolic meaning, and attracting readers' interest in reading... However, with the booming development of WeChat public platform, the role of the titles we learned in junior high and high school seems to have changed a little. The role of those titles that we have recited countless times is not as closely related to real life as it is to scores. In other words, what we need from a headline is different these days. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of the title . Let’s recall: Every time we open the WeChat subscription account interface, we will see articles from many public accounts at the same time, but in the end we will only choose one tweet to read. So the question is: Why did you click on this article? What made you decide to click in and read on? In fact, the answer is very simple, just two words - title . Have you ever thought about how long it takes for readers to decide whether to click to read a tweet when they see the title?Only 0.5 seconds. That is to say, if the title of an article does not attract readers within 0.5 seconds, it almost loses the chance of being read. Even if the author spent several hours, days or even months writing this article, and the article is rich in content, novel in topic selection, and rigorous in logic... but if readers don't read it, all of this will lose its meaning . Just like when we are looking for a job, you have strong personal abilities, rich work experience, and suitable professional skills, but your resume is poorly written, so the human resources specialist will eliminate you in the resume screening round, and all your talents will lose the opportunity to be displayed. But if you can spend more time, carefully format and design the content, so that your resume stands out among many applicants, you will first be favored by human resources specialists, who will then be willing to learn about your abilities and experience.The title, like a resume, is the stepping stone to success and also a decisive factor. In the moment when readers glance over, only if the title of the article is eye-catching enough can it attract more attention from readers and prompt readers to open it, and finally there will be the so-called high reading volume and high forwarding rate . If you are interested in the data, you can look up the titles of some articles with 100,000+ or 1,000,000+ views and make a table comparing the titles. Or you can choose a few public accounts that you read a lot and like, and compare their article titles and reading data to explore and understand the intrinsic connection between reading volume and titles. If you are the operator of a WeChat public account platform, you have never or rarely done data analysis on similar titles and article reading volumes. I suggest you do a long-term data tracking and comparison , and pay special attention to the number of clicks from conversations and Moments in the picture and text reading information statistics. This will be of great benefit to the positioning and development of the official account. Practice is the only criterion for testing truth. The importance of the title is not something I say, but is strongly supported by data . Since the title plays such an important role, how can we choose a title that can arouse readers' desire to click? Before talking about specific methods, let me first correct three common misunderstandings in title creation.01Myth 1:The longer the title, the better You may have heard this saying: short titles are dead. The longer the title, the more likely it is to attract readers to click and read . In fact, this is a statement that lacks product thinking and is very disrespectful of facts. Why do you say that? Friends who have been exposed to the backend operations of WeChat public accounts should know that the number of words displayed in the title of an article is different on different versions and models of mobile phones. For example, the same article can display about 30 words on the Android version of Xiaomi Note phone, but can only display about 20 words on the iOS version of Apple 8 phone. If the title of an article is longer than 20 characters, it will be incompletely displayed on many readers' mobile phones. Let me ask you, if readers don’t read the entire title of the tweet, will they understand the subject of the tweet? If readers don’t know the topic of the article, will they still be willing to open this tweet? However, this does not mean that short titles are necessarily good and can attract readers . Since readers are reluctant to click on an article because the title is too long and they cannot understand the article’s topic, will they also give up clicking on an article because the title is too short and they cannot fully understand the article’s topic? Therefore, it is meaningless to excessively pursue the number of words in the title . The reason why we do not advocate titles that are too long is first of all from a technical perspective; and from the content level, a title that is too long or too short is not conducive to attracting readers to click on the article. In this way, the title can be of moderate length, and the most important thing is to attract readers to click on the title and read the article .02Myth 2:The title should contain a lot of information A friend once asked me to help modify the title of an article. The original title was: "Rural women earn over 10,000 yuan a month by working in self-media: Don't choose to go blind in an industry with a bright future." What do you feel after reading this title? I asked a few friends around me, and their general feeling can be summed up in three words: I don’t understand . What industry has a bright future? Is the self-media industry the only one with a bright future in rural areas? What’s wrong with rural women doing their own media? What does this have to do with me? Later, I helped her change the title to: " Rural women earn over 10,000 yuan a month by working in self-media, how about you? " Why did I change this? Let’s first briefly analyze the original title, which happens to contain the two misunderstandings I mentioned. First, the title has 26 words, which is too long and difficult to read, and it is difficult to attract readers' interest . Second, the original title contains too much information and lacks focus . "Rural women can earn over 10,000 yuan a month by working in self-media" and "Don't choose to go blind in an industry with a bright future" are both very good ideas. Each of them can attract readers individually, but when put together, they seem lengthy and redundant, which has the opposite effect of getting half the result with twice the effort. So, I chose to delete the second half of the sentence directly, and at the same time strengthened the first half by adding a "What about you?" at the end of the title. This seemingly plain and insignificant rhetorical question strengthens the connection between the article and the reader, forms an interaction with the reader, and arouses the curiosity of the reader , who can't help but reflect: "Rural women earn more than 10,000 yuan a month, why do I only get 5,000 yuan for working from 9 to 9 every day?" Finally, I need to emphasize one more point. When you are choosing a title, think more about the phrase " less is more ". Focusing on one hot spot is sometimes far better than presenting all the hot spots to readers. Just like when you eat too much sugar, you forget what sweetness tastes like. When readers receive too many hot topics through titles, it is less likely that they will be curious .03Myth 3:The purpose of a title is to summarize the content of the article This is also the most common misunderstanding that many people make when choosing titles. When we were in school, our Chinese teachers often emphasized that the role of the title is to summarize the content of the article. Coupled with the influence of traditional paper media news releases, we are accustomed to regarding the title as a high-level summary and conclusion of the article content . The reason why the titles of news releases in traditional media need to highly summarize the content of the article is influenced by its genre and content requirements. However, those engaged in the new media industry, especially self-media, need to make adjustments based on the characteristics of the self-media itself . Let’s take a look at a typical newspaper news headline - "Guangzhou Baiyun Airport picked up and dropped off more than 410,000 tourists in two days." This title is a highly condensed and summarized version of the article’s content.The newspaper has limited space, and the content is mainly presented in the form of pictures and texts . When the title and text are presented at the same time, the title is required to be very concise, and it is best to make a high-level summary and conclusion of the content, so that when readers read the newspaper, even if they have a short time, they only need to glance at the title to obtain important information . In recent years, media convergence has developed rapidly. The official accounts of national media such as Xinhua News Agency and People's Daily Online have actively innovated and adapted to the new media style. As long as you pay attention, you will find that many of their news headlines and content are very down-to-earth. For example:
"Do people in Northeast China use shovels to eat ice cream? The truth is...”(People's Daily Online)
"After withdrawing money, I lost my life savings! When she was in despair, a small note appeared...”(People's Daily Online)
"Like for life!" Daughter "borrowed" her mother's womb to give birth to her own baby... (Xinhua News Agency)
"These 21 leave notes written by a mother to her son are tear-jerking! 》(Xinhua News Agency)
This is because the information presentation method of new media is foldable, the main text is hidden, and readers can only see dozens of headlines at first glance. If the headlines cannot attract readers to click, the reading volume will naturally not be high. Therefore, titles also need to be differentiated according to different carriers so that the titles can play the correct role. The purpose of a newspaper news headline is to give a high-level summary of the article and save time for readers; however, the title of a new media article has only one purpose, which is to attract readers to open it. This must be kept in mind. When I first started working in new media, I often felt exhausted by trying to come up with a good title. Sometimes I would spend an entire night coming up with dozens of titles, then reject them one by one. Finally, after carefully selecting and revising a title over and over again, it would be rejected in the end . So later I searched for many "production" methods of good titles on the Internet, and studied thousands of good titles, taking the essence and removing the dross, and finally formed my own set of title selection methods. When talking about "good titles", everyone's first reaction may be titles like "Look, it will be deleted after × hours" or "Shock! ××× actually made..." Indeed, when new media first emerged, such headlines could quickly attract readers. However, as the new media industry continues to develop and competition becomes increasingly fierce, good headlines are no longer the original "title parties" that lacked moral bottom line , because they have been eliminated by the times and are hated by people.A good title is not only attractive, but also in line with the times and conforms to mainstream aesthetics. The pursuit of open rates and reading volumes does not mean that there is no bottom line or morality. This is also the professional ethics that everyone engaged in the new media industry should adhere to. Only in this way can the official account develop in the long run and the industry atmosphere will get better and better. Author: Lv Bai
