Ha ha -- made you look...

Whether writing a blog post, a classified ad for your listing, an Adwords Ad, or anything else - the headline is 90% of the equation when it comes to readership. A boring headline (whether relevant or not) could get 99% less traffic than a compelling headline.

I'm on vacation with my extended family, and my brother took a great picture of my daughter and me playing in the waves.  When I shared with my Facebook & Twitter friends, I used a headline something to the effect of "Playing at the beach in North Carolina" I got less than a dozen views in the first hour.

Then, I thought of a funny headline, so for kicks, I deleted the old post and reposted the picture. The jump in response rate was pretty interesting...

Even though it was the same exact picture, and only an hour after the first time I posted, it, my twitter post of "Getting my daughter high at the beach" got over 100 views before an hour had passed. (152 views after 77 minutes, to be exact.)

Next time you're writing an ad that you want to get as many eyeballs on as possible, it might be worth your while to do some pre-testing of a couple titles to see which is the most catchy. Below are a few ways to do your testing:

1. Set up a BudURL.com account to track your clickthroughs, and post a couple different titles to your Twitter account with a budURL link pointing at your blog post.  If one gets a better clickthrough rate than the other, use that title & you're likely to get better readership over time.
2. If you're testing website content, it might be worth pre-testing by running a couple different Adwords ads with different headlines. Whichever ad has the higher clickthrough rate (which Google automatically tracks for you) should be the winner. Take that ad copy, incorporate it into your web copy, and you'll likely see an increase in the number of website visitors that turn into leads! (For more information from me about Adwords as a traffic source, visit TripleYourTraffic.net.)
   
3. Mturk.com is probably one of the best websites I've ever found for testing headlines.  In a nutshell, you can get instant feedback for as little as a few pennies per opinion.  If you're debating between a couple different headlines for your blog post, press release, or classified ad, "just mturk it"!  All you have to do is bid a few pennies per opinion, and ask "Which headline makes you more interested in reading the article that follows: "A) Cute picture of me & my daughter jumping at the beach or B) Getting my daughter high at the beach."  For a total of $2.50 (a nickel per opinion) -- 10 minutes later, you could have 50 "votes" from people around the united states who will chime in with what they feel is the more compelling headline...
   

Next time you want to get traffic to your blog, website, or phone - try adding a little extra zing to your title or headline... I bet you'll see a big difference in response rates.