Headlines. They’re the gatekeepers of your content. It’s weird to think of it like that right? We’re all jockeying for the attention of readers scrolling through feeds and you’ve got a just few seconds to grab someone’s attention. This isn’t easy and there isn’t a (silver bullet) one solution for all platforms. Whether you’re optimizing your LinkedIn posts for engagement, writing landing page copy to drive conversions, or crafting email newsletters that generate clicks, effective headlines are the key to success you’re seeking.
Why Are Headlines So Important?
Think of headlines as the front door to your house. A great headline invites people in, makes them curious, and promises value. On platforms like LinkedIn, where content is consumed at warp speed, or landing pages designed to convert visitors into leads, the wrong headline can send people running for the hills—or the “back” button.
But what makes a headline work?
A strong headline must:
Speak directly to your audience’s needs and desires.
Promise a solution, a benefit, or valuable information.
Stand out amidst the noise.
It’s an art and a science. And mastering it can lead to higher engagement, more leads, and ultimately, more business.
Crafting Headlines for LinkedIn Posts
LinkedIn is a unique beast when it comes to headlines. Professionals scroll their feed looking for value, not sales pitches. That means your headlines must be direct, insightful, and, most importantly, relevant.
Key Strategies:
Hook Their Interest: The first few words should capture attention. Use power words like “Why,” “How,” or numbers (lists and steps draw readers in).
Address Their Pain Points: Identify a common problem within your industry or profession and hint at a solution.
Use Action Verbs: Words like “Discover,” “Uncover,” and “Master” push readers toward action.
Example in Theory:
Effective: “How to Increase LinkedIn Engagement by 40% in 30 Days”
Poor: “Increasing LinkedIn Engagement and Activity”
See the difference? The first one is specific, has a timeframe, and offers value. The second is vague and uninspiring.
Writing Headlines for Landing Pages
Landing pages are designed to convert. Whether you’re collecting emails, selling a product, or promoting a service, the headline must convey why the visitor should stay and take action. The stakes are higher here—you’ve already gotten their click, now you need to earn their trust.
Key Strategies:
Focus on the Benefit: What will the user gain? Be clear, specific, and offer a solution.
Create Urgency: Use words that imply limited time offers or exclusive benefits.
Keep It Concise: People skim online. Your headline should be short, punchy, and easy to digest.
Example in Theory:
Effective: “Boost Your Sales by 30% with Our Proven Email Marketing Strategy”
Poor: “Sign Up for Our Email Marketing Services Today!”
Notice how the first headline gives a specific benefit (30% sales increase) and a hint of credibility (“proven”). The second one? Bland. It doesn’t offer anything that grabs attention or excites.
Crafting Headlines for Email Newsletters
In the world of email marketing, your headline—or subject line—determines whether your message will even get opened. This is a make-or-break moment for engagement, and the wrong subject line can doom even the most well-written email to the junk folder.
Key Strategies:
Personalization: Use the recipient’s name, or tailor the headline to their specific interests.
Be Conversational: Emails are personal, so your subject lines should sound human.
Spark Curiosity: Pique interest without giving too much away.
Example in Theory:
Effective: “Sarah, Here’s How You Can Save 20% on Your Next Project”
Poor: “Save 20% on Services”
The first example speaks directly to the recipient and feels personalized. The second is generic and screams “spam.”
5 Examples of Effective Headlines
Now that we’ve covered some key strategies, I want you to take a look at five more examples of effective headlines that would work well across LinkedIn posts, Landing Pages, and Email Newsletters:
“Unlock the Secrets to Growing Your Business on LinkedIn—Step-by-Step Guide Inside”
“How to Double Your Email Open Rates in Just 7 Days”
“Master the Art of SEO and Watch Your Traffic Skyrocket”
“Why Most Small Businesses Fail at Digital Marketing (and How You Can Succeed)”
“Ready to Scale? Here’s How Our Clients Are Seeing 3X Growth in a Year”
These headlines are effective because they offer specific results, appeal to emotions, and promise valuable insights or solutions.
5 Examples of Poor Headlines
And here are five examples of what not to do:
“Business Growth Tips for LinkedIn”
“Learn How to Send Better Emails”
“SEO Techniques to Improve Traffic”
“The Best Digital Marketing Tools You Can Use”
“Grow Your Business Fast with These Strategies”
These headlines fail because they are vague, lack urgency, and don’t offer any clear benefit to the reader. You want to stay far away from generalizations and provide specifics to catch attention.
[BONUS] SEO Considerations for Crafting Headlines
Really quick, I want to add in some tips about SEO which is an essential element of your digital marketing. The headlines you craft should not only grab attention but also enhance your site’s visibility on search engines like Google.
Key Strategies:
1. Include Keywords – Think about what your audience is searching for. Terms like “LinkedIn engagement,” “email open rates,” and “SEO tips” are gold.
2. Focus on Long-Tail Keywords – These are more specific and help you stand out. For example, instead of “email marketing,” use “how to improve email open rates.”
3. Optimize for Click-Through Rates (CTR) – Google measures how often people click on your headline. Headlines that promise value and match user intent will perform better in search results.
Wrapping things up here, I want to leave you with these precursors to your headlines to be specific, be valuable, and speak to your audience’s pain points. Remember that’s the whole reason they’re searching the internet for, and if you can win their trust and become their subject matter expert. Effective headlines get the job done and if you get them right, you’ll see the difference in your engagement, conversions, and overall business growth. So, take a moment before you hit “publish” and ask yourself: Does this headline really make people want to keep reading? If not, it’s time to refine, tweak, and perfect until it does. I almost used that as the headline for this article to be honest 🤓
You’ve got a WordPress website, that’s great! Now you’re probably wondering how to get more people to see and visit it with all the hard work you put into it. Thankfully there’s plugins and strategy you can use to boost your search engine ranking, and you’ll be learning more about those during this presentation. 95% of everything shown and explained in this presentation are shovel ready items that you can take and put to work immediately on your own websites. If you’re looking for a custom solution or strategy for your email marketing efforts, please be sure to contact us so that we can help.
In case you missed my presentation from WordCamp Miami, I talked about some free tools and apps that can help create content. The feedback from this was amazing and again I’m continually thankful for the platform and opportunity. As a speaker, the greatest joy in getting up on stage is knowing that what you have to say makes in impact on those in the audience. I’m continuing to do my best with recording these opportunities so that I can share them with anyone who wasn’t able to attend.
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We all know that we have to constantly create content for our digital platforms. Whether that’s for our websites, blogs, or social sites, fresh content needs to be created on a regular basis. If you’re looking for tools to make it easier, faster, and give you more options than this is the slide deck for you!
Because I often get asked what tools we use, I figured why not put together a slide deck with our mostly used ones. Check out the deck below and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me @jpdesigntheory
Another new year has begun and prior to January first, like most of you, I had a good few goals I wanted to begin come the turn of the year. I imagined myself doing them, I wrote a few of them down on paper, and I barely started two of them. And that’s me being honest.
That hype that you have about fresh and newness is the same attitude most of your potential customers and visitors are also expecting from your website too. Because they are expecting this, we don’t want to let them down. This is why I’ve started to renew the idea of writing a quality post at least once a week as well as post much more regularly my photographic work on my social media sites.
Being a creative you’d think that I’d have a ton of materials for my website and social sites all the time ready to go. Well, to be honest, as a creative we’re probably the most critical over our work than most others in different trades. So below are five great changes you can make to your website to give it a fresh look for the start of 2017.
1: Update Your Home Page Graphics and Hero Graphics
Whenever landing on a website your eyes are usually first intrigued by the images and graphics that are at the top. Those visuals may be accompanied by text to better describe the graphic or also with buttons that lead to other pages or to a call to action or product. Think about how much better some more relevant images could do for your website in better describing your products or services.
2: Change Some Colors
Not saying you should change your brand identity, but maybe use some of your highlight or accent colors in a different way. Be subtle but make a fresh impact that leads to something worth looking at or reading for your website visitors. I’m recently working with a client where their logo is their first name in gold and they have a couple of other websites that could use the same gold color in the logo to create a linking motive while keeping separate identities for each website. It’s kind of like finding an easter egg in a Marvel movie – when you see it, you smile.
3: Use Video
Video explains so much and when done right will capture and keep the attention of your visitors a bit better than regular text and more so than a static image. For those of you with products, how about creating a video that describes how to use the product, how it saves time, or even the difference of your product over a competitor product. Other video ideas could be you describing what the website stands for, why it’s relevant, or better yet video testimonials from past and current customers.
4: Create a Worth-While Call-to-Action
You’ve gotta create an incentive for people to come back. While “creating great content” is the common phrase you hear all the time, part of that content needs to be something that is engaging or offers some value. We’re all used to seeing the 10%-25% off stuff and even those sometimes don’t entice most consumers to buy alone. Why not offer something that your visitors will actually use. Try offering a free hour with the purchase of the first hour. Or suggest this product to two friends and you get this free.
5: Make it a Point to Post Once a Week
This may be the hardest thing to do. We’re busy, there are other things we must get done, we don’t have time, don’t want to make time, etc. I can give you plenty of excuses. But it’s 2017, there are too many services out there that you can sub-contract your busy work to. For me, Sunday nights are the best times for me to sit down and write out my posts and schedule my social media. I’m more in the mood to do it then and it helps me to get the weight off my shoulders when my week actually does start. Once you get on a roll with it, you’ll find how easy it is to keep going and making it a priority. Don’t forget to track with analytics to better curate your content.
We often get questions from our clients and people to our website or social media about ways to generate traffic on a website that don’t cost as much as doing full blown SEO Marketing. If you don’t know already, the median cost for adequate SEO (search engine optimization) campaigns can range from $250 – $5,000 a month if not more. Depending on your business’ marketing budget, you may not be able to afford anything towards paid marketing, and that’s ok. One of the best things you can do to promote your business and drive traffic “organically” to your website is to create great content on a your website.
Creating organic content is rather easy in thought. If you’ve got a WordPress website, you’ve already got a blog built in. So logging in and creating a post and publishing it is a snap. Check out our free how to videos if you need a refresher.
The Value Add
The value in your posts is what you talk about and how detailed or defined you can get. It’s not so much on repeating what most may already know about your industry, but a different take on something common or a simple way of solving a problem that most suffer though the hard way. And in there lies the organic and realistic perspective that only you can provide in your words.
The more topics you write about in this same fashion you will build up a fan base. People who respect what you have to say over some industry leaders even. Why? Because of your unique perspective and how relatable you are.
Provoke An Action
Once your readers have consumed your posts, you should ask them to take an action. This action may be fulfilling a promise, sharing your post with 2-3 people, trying out the steps you laid out, or maybe even to prove you wrong in a way. Lastly, you can offer a give-a-way of something of value to your readers. Could be a top 10 list, discount coupon, or something of the like so that they are willing to give you their names and email addresses in exchange for this free option. This is also a great way to build your email list!
Monitor Your Analytics
While you may not see too many comments on your posts, you may notice the increase in traffic to your website on the days you post, and a couple of days after each post. But first lets talk about consistency. Your readers would appreciate knowing that you’ll be publishing new content on a regular basis. That “regular” basis may be once a week or more, but it is at the least consistent. This is probably the hardest challenge of all. We all get bogged down with busy work and life moments that pouring into our business can sometimes be more of a chore than a pleasure. I promise you the results will encourage you, where the lack of publishing will also be seen in your analytics.
While these are just a few benefits of self publishing for what I like to call sweat equity marketing, there are always more. We’ll write more about it next week to keep this post short. In the meantime what are some topics in mind that you are ready to publish? Check out this cool and FREE Editorial Calendar. It may help you put all those ideas down and plan when to write and publish them for the next few days and weeks.
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