Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Your headline will determine the success of your article.This is something that Vincent Musetto, a former editor of the New York Post who passed away in June, knew to be true -- even when newspapers were only products of paper and ink. He was a master at structuring sentences and organizing words into wacky, surprising, and memorable ways. 

Consider his most famous headline: Headless Body in Topless Bar

Or his personal favorite from his work: Granny Executed in Her Pink Pajamas

I wouldn't hesitate to click. According to a study from Upworthy -- a site with a polarizing headline formula -- traffic to an article can vary by 500% based on the headline. ...

The 28-page paper reports findings on clickthrough rates, engagement and conversion drawn from a number-crunching study of 3.3 million headlines from paid links. (Outbrain is a content discovery platform, meaning it puts sponsored content in the path of website readers. It’s new media advertising, basically.)

The data is pretty damn shocking…… and confusing… and frustrating… and counter-intuitive…

It flies in the face of much of what I teach. And it makes the question I asked in th ase first line of this article, “What do I know about writing headlines?” take on a whole new inflection....

Our tweets average 100 to 150 clicks each. These headlines? They routinely pull in 200+ clicks every time we share them.

Here’s a peek at the Twitter Tips for Beginners headline, shared in the past 90 days....

NewsCred: Is there something universal about great content?

Thompson: A really important aspect of content, particularly on the web, is the quality of insight. And insight doesn’t need to be surprising. It can be insight about things that are very familiar, and that give us a frame for things that are already top of mind. Or, in the case of a lot of advertising, something that makes us feel good about ourselves. Good content should produce some new line of thought.

How do you choose what to write about?

I read Twitter until I find something that raises a question. I wait until I become curious about something. That’s a luxury I have, though. I think that sometimes people are more distrustful of brands than they are of journalists, because brands come with an explicit message -- “buy my thing” -- and journalists don’t. I think it’s a little weird when a brand tries to harp too much on what people are talking about. What does a soda company have to say about Ferguson? That seems cheap....