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....