Blog News Watch

Internet users do not care if you can come up with a cute headline.

They don’t care if you can come up with some awesome wordplay or a lame pun to - as far as you are concerned - spice it up.

The attention span of the average internet user as they surf through site after site is microscopic. Nanoscopic, even. You may as well not even call it an attention span because it just doesn’t span.

But while you’re trying to get some of their nanoscopic attention, you have to make it damn clear what they could be clicking on or reading for the next few minutes.

If there is a niggling doubt as to what the page will actually be about, you’re out of luck.

If your pun is really bad… well, expect your RSS subscription to drop to zero. Just kidding about that part. Don’t panic.

Simple, descriptive, and as short as clearly possible.

What are the basic elements of a good blog post title? We all know there are a million ways to get attention above and beyond the basics. I used a “How To” in the title of this post, which makes part of an attractive headline for many web surfers. But forget them for now and leave them until another time; we just want the basics.

1. Simple

Keep it simple, stupid. Save the jokes for the text. Just blurt it out, clearly and simply, without embellishment.

We’re not going for a literary prize here. It’s a friggin’ blog post, remember? It just needs to say what the post is about and…

2. Descriptive

It needs to actively describe what the reader can expect from the post. If you intended to write a post about how to write headlines for blog posts and instead spend a whole post talking about why headlines are important, change the title.

If a reader wastes time reading something that was not what they were told it will be, they will feel cheated. Cheated of their precious time, that could be spent reading an article that truly is about blog post titles. This one, perhaps.

3. Short

“Short” does not mean sticking to a word count. It doesn’t mean cutting good information out for the sake of brevity. It just means: don’t repeat, don’t embellish, don’t make anything any longer than it has to be.

Some people make the mistake that embellishing or repeating facts will help the reader understand something better. If you have simply and descriptively stated something in the first place, there is no need to say it again and again in different ways. There’s no reason to add adjectives to nouns that don’t change the meaning to begin with.

Leave that crap to the tautologists (yes, I invented the word because so many of you bloggers seem to be running your articles on tautologies alone!).

There are a million psychological tricks and tips you can use to improve your blog post headlines. There are all sorts of simple changes you can make.

But without the basics, those tricks won’t make a damn bit of difference.

In fact, you’ll just be bloating something that was already bad to begin with.

When it comes to headlines, first and foremost: say it like it is, no more, and no less.