My 6-Step Guide to Writing a Powerful Headline
By: Hi Tiffany
Tags: Writing, Headlines, Content Marketing, Self Improvement, Inspiration

This title took me 1 hour and 3 minutes.

To get from,

“Ways to come up with creative headlines” to

“Ingenious ways to come up with creative headlines” to

“How to write creative headlines people will read” to

“How I write powerful headlines (and how you can too)” to

“My 6 step-guide to writing a powerful headline.”

Sure, it might sound like an excess waste of time because there’re more important things to worry about (e.g. bills to pay, our own mouths to feed). But the reason why I take so long to craft a good headline for each one of my posts is because,

“Titles are half the battle to getting people to read your content.”

You see, if you can’t attract people to click your post, you wasted your whole time writing a piece nobody wants to read. It’s the same as if you never wrote anything at all.

And that’s a problem you don’t want to keep running into, especially if you want to grow your voice or business.

So if you want people to read every word you say, you have to write a good headline. No excuses. No shortcuts. That’s why I created a 6-step guide that can help you craft a powerful headline, every time. It’s one I’ve refined for over 1 1/2 years and is now bumping my post views to the thousands and my read ratio to over 25%.

Let me show you how it’s done.

Behind the Scenes of Writing a Powerful Headline

1. Think about what your readers might like or find useful

Before I thought about writing this topic, I already knew what my readers wanted.

A survey my team made at Rabbut.

28% wanted more views for their blog.

54% wanted to know what topics to write about.

Okay, what should I talk about that’d solve all of their problems?

Oh! How to write a super catchy, (but) useful headline people would want to read. That’d instantly boost their views and, at the same time, help them brainstorm more useful topics. Perfect!

When you know what problems your readers are facing or what they want, it’s easy to come up with useful topics. Create a survey. Find your highest viewed/recommended post. Email them (that’s if you have a Medium email list).

It’s better to know what topics are high in demand than to blindly write something people may not like or care about.

2. Write your first headline.

Just do it.

Don’t worry if it sounds crappy, because it probably WILL sound crappy. And that’s okay.

I mean I didn’t like the ring of my first headline: “Ways to come up with creative headlines.” It felt too cliché. Too vague. Too boring. But at least it wraps around my main purpose — which was to help people write clever headlines.

That’s all you need to do.

3. Copy-paste your headline into Google (via incognito)

The reason why I use incognito is because it gives me fresh, unbiased results for a specific keyword or phrase. In other words, I’d get a more accurate view on the highest ranking headlines on Google.

For instance, this is what I got:

Don’t search on your normal browser — Google might rank certain sites (and headlines) higher based on your previous search results.

To use incognito,

-Windows, Linux, or Chrome OS: Press Ctrl + Shift + n

-Mac: Press ⌘ + Shift + n

4. Jot down powerful words and phrases