Blog Club: Six things I hate about Headlines

So yeah, hate might be a bit strong but we’ve been talking this morning about titles for blog posts. You’ll remember that last week we fired off as many headlines as we could. Today we’ve talked about crafting them a bit more. My things are: It’s one of those things again that falls too quickly … Continue reading Blog Club: Six things I hate about Headlines →

So yeah, hate might be a bit strong but we’ve been talking this morning about titles for blog posts. You’ll remember that last week we fired off as many headlines as we could. Today we’ve talked about crafting them a bit more.

My things are:

It’s one of those things again that falls too quickly into conversations about SEO and “making” people read your shit.
I tend to be too clever about it – the post rarely lives up to the anticipation.
If I can’t think of anything to write, then just writing a headline can get me started.
Sometimes it’s just a placeholder for getting me writing. I will often come back and edit the title after I’ve finished the post.
If you look back, you’ll see that I often include twitter handles – this means that when it gets automatically shared the person I mention sees it in their mentions.
Six things I hate about… is a lazy, innacurate and more likely to make people skip over it anyway.