Let Your Stories Teach You How to Write Headlines

Marco Arment got me to thinking about headlines today. Let me start by apologizing to Marco for nearly copying his post in it’s entirety. I don’t normally do that. In post “My Bad Post Titles Are Getting Out Of Control And Are Inconvenient For Techmeme, Now,” he writes:

At Least When Business Insider Copies My Articles Nearly In Their Entirety, They Write Their Own Sensational Titles To Replace Mine And Make Me Sound Much More Critical Of Apple Than My Posts Really Are, Every Single Time I Write Anything About Them.

Unquestionably, Business Insider writes compelling headlines, often around content it ah, borrows, from elsewhere. It’s parasitically symbiotic, when the aggregation tactic returns pageviews, although I strongly suspect the original site loses more than gains.

Late today, I looked over my headlines for Betanews, where I freelance, to see how effective they are as measured by pageviews. Counting pageviews is an inexact science because of Google News, which can drive huge amounts of traffic sometimes inexorably. There are lessons other bloggers or journalists can learn from my exercise, which they should imitate with their own posts. So here are some, but by no means all, of the bigger hitters, presented in no particular order of importance:

• “Should you dump Internet Explorer, NOW?” is my highest pageview-count story freelancing for Betanews, by a huge margin. Interestingly, the story racked up two-thirds of the pageviews on a Sunday. I’m convinced the all-caps “NOW” was a factor, coupled with the topic and timing (holiday weekend in the US). It’s exception to my observation that questions generally don’t drive pageviews.
• “The world doesn’t need an Apple tablet, or any other“: The pageviews were huge but still about half as many as the “dump IE” post. The headline is provocative and timing important, around rumors about the then unannounced iPad.
• “Why I chose Windows 7 over Snow Leopard (and you should, too)” This is my most successful headline for the long haul. The first few days’ pageviews were well above average, which is good. Better: The post has the longest tail, racking up good ongoing pageviews every day since.
• “Apple has gone too far“, which was follow-up to “Has Apple Gone Too Far?” The follow-up racked up 14 times more pageviews in the first two days. Consistently, question headlines disappoint.
• “Apple declares war on the entire PC industry” also racked up big pageviews—and comments, too. The headline intrigues because of the conflict.
• “Mac fanboys should get a life and some Windows 7 common sense” racked up great pageviews but did even better for reader comments. This is another example of a great conflict headline, but one that also baits and inflames Mac and Windows PC user passions.
• “Apple should sue Gizmodo over stolen iPhone prototype“: This was an aggressive and risky headline that delivered better-than-average pageviews. I debated about what to call the iPhone and opted for prototype because it added to the mystic of “stolen”.
• “Nearly half the money spent at US retail on desktop PCs goes to Apple“: Six months earlier I posted “Apple has 91% of market for $1,000+ PCs, says NPD” looking at unit shipments. Both stories initially did quite well. But the 91% post also has a long tail of pageviews; percentage headlines can be huge if done right.
• “10 questions to ask before buying iPad“: Top-10 lists are hugely popular, but this one was cleverly written. Hey, sometimes I’m in the zone.
• “10 things Microsoft did wrong in 2009” was another successful top-10er. Interestingly, I did a Microsoft “right” list and right and wrong lists about Apple, too. The wrongs drew in more readers.
• “7 People who are returning their iPads” is classic. It was late-day, and I had written nothing. Then I read in RSS feeds that journalist Jeff Jarvis would return his iPad. I found six other people and posted about them all. The headline works in part because of timing (right after iPad’s launch) and there is the voyeur appeal. With so many blogs or news sites writing about great iPad sales, topic “buyer’s remorse” is compelling.

A number of posts I expected to do well, because of the headlines, drew lots of comments but not exceptional pageviews. I consider big-comment stories to be successful, as they’re a measure of reader interest and interaction. But pageviews pay. 🙁 Examples:

• “My Windows 7 confession (and why you should confess, too)“: Apple and Mac fanboys rattled one another in comments. But for all their discussion, pageviews were good but not exceptional, as I expected.
• “Microsoft Office is obsolete” pulled reasonably good pageviews, but nowhere what I anticipated. By comparison, the post generated plenty of comments (and many of them calling me and idiot).
• “Will you buy an Apple iPad?“: Readers responded to the question in comments, but the pageviews disappointed. It’s another example of why question headlines are just OK.
• “Cops raid Gizmodo editor home—you don’t mess with Steve Jobs“: The post delivered pretty good pageviews, but nowhere what I expected. That said, the controversy racked up comments and good reader discussion.
• “Will iPad bomb or be the bomb?“: This post demonstrates the language risks when writing for a global audience. I think many readers didn’t understand what “the bomb” means. Still, there were plenty of comments.
• “Windows Phone 7 Series is a lost cause“: I expected huge pageviews from the provocative headline. They didn’t come, but, again, commenting was unusually high, particularly considering the modest pageviews.

Several patterns emerge from the headlines, which were written for a technology audience:

1. Apple is a hot topic right now. Almost any Apple story with provocative headline draws in readers, and links from other sites.
2. Microsoft is a lukewarm topic right now. I made my name in tech news circles writing about Microsoft. More recently, my Microsoft posts do OK, but generally not nearly as well as those about Apple (unless there is Apple-Microsoft conflict).
3. Conflict and controversy sell. It’s an old adage in the news business that people love to read about conflict between party X and Y or Z.
4. Top-10 lists are hugely popular. It’s one reason blogs and news sites are flooded with them.
5. Affirmative headlines are powerful. Some editors disdain taking a God-like omniscient position. But five of the 12 successful headlines above are affirmative, two telling readers what they “should” do. Most of the remaining headlines are affirmative statements of fact. Among the six pageview disappointments above, those with affirmative headlines generated the most comments.
6. Percentages generate clicks—now and for the future. Over many years of writing, I’ve observed that readers easily understand a provocative statistic, generating reads (and so pageviews). Statistic headlines can generate additional pageviews over a long time, in part driven by search engines.
7. People want gossip and rumors. I presented no gossip headlines here, because I don’t write many rumor stories. But they can hugely draw-in readers. There’s always someone looking for the inside story, the backstory or the next story. Apple product rumors are good examples, as are scandals. Can you say Tiger Woods without thinking dangerous liaisons?

For any of my regular technology readers wondering why I write less about Microsoft and more about Apple, this post is your answer. For any blogger or journalist wondering how to write better headlines, start by repeating the exercise I have done here. Go back through your posts and look at pageview and comment numbers compared to headline types. Heck, use a spreadsheet, which I didn’t use here. I generally see patterns better intuitively.

By the way, the search engine optimization obsessed insist that the best headlines are keyword heavy. Bullshit. Headlines are hugely important for building audience, which for online isn’t so different from print. Keywords are important, but there are many other factors such as incoming links that affect search ranking. Where do those links come? People. Not algorithms. People who stopped to read the post, because something (could that be the headline) caught their attention. I’ll have more to share on that topic in a future post.

Photo Credit: Adam Bowie