Most people don’t put any effort into writing a compelling title for their blog posts, according to the latest research. But while many people do pay attention to this aspect, it’s still hard to nail it every time. So let’s see how you can write more good titles.

A catchy headline catches your audience

Your headline may or may not say it all, but it does create expectations for the reader – expectations that must be on par with the content in your blog post, otherwise the your reader could lose trust in you. So don’t sensationalize too much without backing those claims with your content.

In fact, according to the research done by Hubspot, Market Domination Media, and Outbrain, your title may be the only chance your blog post has to generate new page views and new visitors for your blog.

Attract, engage and convert

Marketers need to set three main goals in creating their content: attracting website traffic, engaging visitors, and converting visitors into potential paying customers. To do that, one must treat their headlines as follows:

To attract website traffic:

• Include bracketed clarification like (video), (interview), or (infographic).
• Include “Photo” in the name of your artistic work.
• Include “who” in the title.

While the Do’s are somewhat of a no brainer, knowing what not to do is actually what helps drive the most traffic to your blog. The trio of marketing experts outlines the following:

• Don’t include terms like “tip,” magic,” or “credit.”
• Don’t say things like “simple,” “cure,” or “easy.”
• The terms “need,” “free,” and “secret” are also big no-no’s.
• “Amazing,” “trick,” and “always” or “best” won’t do your headlines any favors either.
• Finally, including the word “now” somehow sends visitors running like sheep from a pack of wolves.

Once you’ve got all of this right, the next step is to engage your audience. You do this by following pretty much the same steps as before, only this time you need to be careful not to use negative superlatives like “never” or “worst.” Also, here the term “amazing” is a Do, not a Don’t.

Finally, converting your audience in to leads and potential paying customers is done by including “need” as well as plenty of bracketed info in your heading. The only Don’t here is using the term “trick.” Apparently people who are ready to be converted don’t fall for it.

There’s a truckload of additional tips and tricks in the infographic (hope I didn’t scare you away with those two words) so go ahead and review the whole thing at your leisure below the fold.