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

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.

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.

(there’s a mouthful!)

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.

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.