“What Makes a Great Post Title?”
This is a question that I hear more often than not. My opinion is that it should be descriptive enough (ie: appropriate to the content) without being too wordy. I’m not a big fan of “newspaper titles” (ie: longer, more descriptive, more punchy titles). In fact, I unsubscribe from many blogs because of these longer titles. If you can’t say it in 5 words, you probably can’t say it in 10 or 20.
Steven, over at BlogThenticity, takes a look at the subject by examining some of the leading business and so forth bloggers out there. He doesn’t include me because he says Ensight loads too slow. (Is this true? If it is, I can fix that, just let me know… I’ve got an empty server just sitting there)
Personally, I’d read most of the posts with the shorter titles. Not the longer ones.
I’ve looked back through the archives here at Ensight, and I can’t find any direct correlation between length or descriptivity (yes, new word time) and the number of comments. Some are based on the numbers of links in, some are just randomly interesting it seems.
Who knows, want to enlighten me as to what posts you read here, and what ones you comment on?
April 12th, 2005 at 7:48 am
Your blog, my wonderful friend and valuable ally, loaded quickly this time. But slower than most.
I’m always worried about my Vaspers the Grate blog load time, since I slap an original, albeit miserable, digital artwork on each post, to scare away the comment spammer rats.
I’m going to include your blog, your 5 most recent posts, just give me a minute or three.
Sorry about the download complaint, but I was so dismayed. Might’ve been my own MSN dial-up problem, not yours.
But we must never design sites for broadband. Broadband designing is a huge, massive mistake.
Because many do not even have any access to anything but dial up. I read that somewhere, like Forbes I think.
Your blog is going into the list, where I wanted it to be.
Please don’t hate me.
Blog Post Titles should be written similar to Email Subject Lines, Online Forum Topic Titles, Email Discussion List RE: Titles, Book Chapter Titles, etc.
Short, pithy, rich in instant recognition informaiton.
Jakob Nielsen and Nick Usborne have written about this.
April 12th, 2005 at 8:50 am
one thing that springs to mind is that I tend to comment on posts that as me for my comment – like this one.
I find that if I ask for comments, leave my post open ended that people often leave a comment and keep coming back to see what others write.
I’m sure there is more to it than that of course but that is one thing that comes to mind in my close to sleep state.
April 12th, 2005 at 9:22 am
Darren: this is simple yet profound and of immense value. Yes, every post probably ought to ASK for reader comments, opinions, input. That’s what separates blogs from wikis and web sites and non-web marketing vehicles. Great statement, you genius you.
April 12th, 2005 at 9:39 am
Five words as an example, Jeremy, and yet your last 10 posts, including this one, average 6 words! Practice what ya preach, LOL
Seriously, I want a descriptive, interesting, catchy headline because my primary desktop aggregator is headline-only based so I will almost never clickthru on headlines that are boring or nondescript. The actual character count does matter because after so many characters it is truncated by the program. I think it’s something fairly generous though like 100 characters.
One thing I do not like is deceptive headlines. I will likely unsubscribe if a blog starts doing that. Sure, the headline can and should be clever, but it better have at least something to do with the piece.
April 12th, 2005 at 10:01 am
I hate clever. I prefer Pithy Brief Descriptive. All the micro content experts I know say this. It’s similar to Email Subject Lines. This whole topic is very important, now especially because of RSS readers and the truncation of post titles (headlines). A very serious topic for business bloggers to noodle out. Let’s put our heads together and come up with some general guidelines for us and our clients.
April 12th, 2005 at 10:16 am
I don’t like titles more than 10 words, it’s annoying. Actually, any title that wraps to two lines is annoying. I usually try and keep mine short.
April 12th, 2005 at 10:29 am
You ‘hate’ clever titles, Steven? And who are “all the micro content experts” ??? Sounds like an army of ants or something. Are these people making any money online or just people who make money by trying to educate other people already making money how to make (more) money?
(there’s a mouthful!)
April 12th, 2005 at 10:41 am
Microcontent experts like Jakob Nielsen, Seth Godin, Michelle Keegan, Al Bredenberg, and Kaitlin Duck Sherwood.
Then copywriting experts like Nick Usborne, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Rosser Reeves, and David Ogilvy.
I’ve worked in advertising, direct marketing, and internet technology long enough to see that Content is King and Context is Queen. The content of a blog post title, email subject line, etc. succeeds according to certain general but precise, most of the time in most cases, principles.
Clever, cute, double entendre advertising and print ad headlines are a miserable failure in nearly every application.
These principles have been proven by A/B split testing and quantitative measurements in controlled situations. I’ve seen the studies and the results for clients.
But it depends on what we mean by “clever”. What is clever to one person is stupid and repulsive to another and is smart to another and is completely misunderstood by yet another.
heh.
April 14th, 2005 at 2:21 am
“Best” headlines are different for different blogs. I find NYT or WaPo heds perfectly appropriate in the NYT or the WaPo… but I would find them abrubt and uninformative in the Atlantic or the New Republic.
In a newspaper, you have the story right there… you can jump from headline to lead, and the lead acts as an extention of the headline.
In periodicals and blogs, you don’t get that instant extra info. You must, on the basis of the headline, decide to click the link or flip the page. (I am assuming, of course, that the blog readers are using RSS software and not clicking around to every blog on their list).
So longer, descriptive headlines work better (in my experience). Full RSS feed also seems to be a good idea.
Unfortunately, some A-list bloggers don’t buy this. I saw one recently in which the headline was “I don’t know…” and the RSS feed was “Could be something…” I may have missed the greatest blog post in history by not clicking further, but I reasoned that his 8th-grade rhetoric argued that I would be wasting my time.
April 14th, 2005 at 2:43 am
Again, I maintain that blog post titles are very similar to email subject lines, online forum topic titles, discussion list topic titles.
Different methods for different blogs and audiences, sure.
But I agree completely with Allan Jenkins comment above this one, except I kind of think short is better than long. Long may be truncated
Titles are so hard, look at the dumb artists who have works called “Untitled”.
I did an artwork called “Not Untitled” just to mock them.
heh
April 30th, 2005 at 10:05 am
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