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Writing Successful Headlines

Michi Beck is professional author and editor based in Stuttgart, Germany.

Not everyone can create a successful headline. Even otherwise good writers sometimes struggle with them, because they are in a writing category all to themselves. Good headlines - those that are successful in getting a reader to look at the rest of the article - must catch a person's attention right away. The subject matter is important, of course, but a successful headline is about more than that. It is also about the way that the subject matter is presented. A subject can be interesting or dull, frightening or funny, or almost anything else, depending upon the way it is presented.

Headlines are everywhere, and the way that the New York Times versus the National Enquirer showcases a particular story is likely going to be drastically different - and it is expected to be. Those who read the Post are looking for culture and intellect, and those who read the Enquirer are looking for sensationalism at its best. It only makes sense that the way the stories are presented and the headlines that are offered to catch readers' attention are very different from one publication to the next. These headlines are designed to create interest in the people who exist in a specific niche market.

For a business to succeed, whether online, from a storefront, or both, it has to use this same niche marketing strategy. There are people who will want the goods and services that the business has to offer and people who will not. There will also be exceptions to the niche, but not that many. The key to writing successful headlines is to know that niche market. By being fully aware of what those people want and need - by really knowing who they are - a business can write headlines that keep their attention and make them want to read the rest of the article, advertisement, or whatever the headline is for.

Headlines that are successful are tailored to the kinds of people who will use the business' goods and services, but still broad and general enough that other people may find an interest in them as well. Get too specialized, and not enough potential customers will respond to the headline. Get too general, and the headline will not be interesting enough to catch the attention of most readers. Both of these can be fatal to a business that is simply trying to grow and attract individuals who will become customers and then become repeat customers.

Headlines are also successful if they invoke emotion in the reader. Many medical headlines, for example, make some new piece of information sound very scary until the reader finds that it only applies to X number of people in a certain age group in a specific country. However, since the headline did not say that, the person read the article to find that information. If a business' headlines cannot make a person read the article to find out more, those headlines are not successful. That means it is time for a change of pace, style, and focus in order to create successful headlines that bring stories to life and make people want to read more.