A Good Title

The first thing a reader notices about a text is its title. Bob Stone, one of the world’s best known copywriters said “Your first 15 words count more than the 15,000 words that follow!” A good title is the only way you can impress a prospective reader of your text and convince him or her that what follows would be worth his or her time. It is the title that determines whether the text would be read or left off.

In this era, the internet has millions of websites available. Of course, all of them cannot be unique. Many of them have similar themes and cover the same subjects. So, how to make yours stand out in the crowd? Not only for websites, there is competition everywhere where information is involved. The reader is looking for quick and relevant information. And it is the headline that gives the first impression of the text to the user. It is the headline based on which the user decides if the text is worth more than a glance.

Writing good headlines is the most important skill that a copywriter must have. The goal of a copywriter is to persuade the reader to take some action. That can work only if the reader goes through what is written. So what persuades the reader to read your text completely? Most definitely, it is the headline. The readers quickly scan the top of the text and make snap decisions on whatever is written. A good title can attract them as well as keep them tuned in.

The goal of the headline is getting the first sentence read. Unless the visitor starts reading, it does not matter how well the text is written. A good title can bring the visitor to do just that. Every successful writer would know how critical it is to write a compelling headline. Without that, no one would bother to buy a newspaper. The headlines there are written in bold face, so that you can read them from a distance and you got to buy the paper to read the rest. Experts say that half the total time you have to write a text should be spent on writing the headline.

The famous management principle called the Pareto principle or simply the 80/20 rule, applies to headlines as well. If you write a text, out of 100 people that see it, 80 will read only the headline and 20 will read the entire text. A good title can help you in beating this average. No matter what is your goal behind writing the text is, it is certain that you want to reach largest possible audiences.