Harry Potter Headlines: 10 Ways to Conjure Up a Viral Blog Post Title

Writing your blog post is a lot of work. But it’s usually not the part that gives you the most grief.

Your toughest task is coming up with the right title.

Someone once said, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” But you know what? People do that all the time. Just go to your local bookstore (or amazon.com) and see for yourself. A book—or a blog post—may contain the secret to the universe, but no one will read it if they aren’t drawn in by the title.

Because when your post lands in your subscriber’s in-box or in their Google reader, it’s competing with every other message, every other blog post, every other headline. Readers skim and scan, looking for the one that catches their interest enough to click through.

I often get asked not just which headline types I favor, but why. So here you go, my take on why some  headlines make a post go viral—and which titles seem to get your content read and shared by a bazillion people.

10 Headline Strategies That Can Make Your Blog Post Go Viral

Do you remember the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter books? The magical hat that could not only assign students to the right house at Hogwarts School, but predict the future?

I wish I had a Sorting Hat to try on my headlines and tell me which ones will soar and which ones will self-combust. I used to have one, but I put it through the wash too many times and it was destroyed, along with my girl wizard powers.

So I had to figure out this headline stuff for myself. Oh, and I don’t judge the success of a headline or post solely on the number of comments or page views it gets. In this hurry-up world of ours, sometimes the number of social shares can be a more accurate measure.

Here are some of the headline strategies that have worked for me:

1. Make a bold statement.

This one works so well because it challenges the status quo. Every blogger on the planet tells you it’s all about content. This post contradicts that, right in the title. And readers were curious to know why I was saying that.

My post title:

The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Bloggers: It’s Not All About Content

2. Make a confession or tell a secret.

When you make yourself vulnerable, you make yourself more human, more approachable and more likable to your readers. And they feel that they are in the inside circle.

I decided to share my dreadful first blog post, in hopes that it would inspire my readers and show that they, too, will get better the more they practice this blogging thing.

My post title:

Confessions from Cat’s Eye Writer: 5 Things I’ve Learned Since My Stinky First Post

3. Ask a question that’s on people’s minds.

If you listen—on Facebook, on Twitter, on other blogs—you will come to identify issues people are talking and wondering about. One discussion people were having was whether other social media—Facebook with its “likes,” Twitter and its RTs, etc.—were taking people away from the actual blog post because it is so much easier to share than to comment.

My post title asked the question on people’s minds:

Are Blogs Really Getting Fewer Comments These Days?

4. Touch a raw nerve.

Sometimes an issue will bother you as a blogger. If you blog about it with passion, you are likely to interest readers who feel the same way as you (and also readers who don’t). The title of my  post on the misuse of apostrophes, though it might seem like a light topic,  drew lots of page views, dialogue and social shares.

My post title:

Preventing Apostrophe Abuse Begins at Home

5. Make ‘em curious.

Blogging and writing are often seen as right brain activities. Words, images, emotions. So what if we could take a page from science to improve our blogs and, especially to provide the content our readers are looking for? Well, if we looked at our blogs as living laboratories, we might find the answers.

My post title:

7 Ways to Use Your Blog as a Lab, Even if You Sucked at Science

6. Promise to answer a question but don’t tell how.

Part of the secret of a good headline is to keep your reader guessing. Propose a solution to a problem, but leave a little mystery in your title.

I read a startling fact that most people quit blogging in the first two to three months. I began thinking about why. I called my theory The Princess Syndrome and wrote a post on how to fight the perfection demons when we blog.

My post title:

Why Most People Quit Blogging: The Princess Syndrome

7. Propose a hot button problem and solve it backwards.

In my coaching, I heard from many people who were afraid to leave a comment on a blog. They were worried that they wouldn’t be able to think of something meaningful or profound to say. Or that they would say something that made them sound stupid. Or, worse yet, what if they leave a comment and no one notices it?

Sure, I could have written a headline, “10 Ways to Get Your Blog Comment Noticed.” That’s a good, helpful title, but it’s kind of boring. So I tackled it from the other end: the reasons your comment doesn’t get any attention. Don’t be afraid to use a little healthy fear in your title.

My post title:

10 Reasons No One Notices Your Blog Comment

8. Promise to inspire.

The word “surprising,” used sparingly, can get more click-throughs because it promises the unexpected. I wasn’t going for the “get more readers, get more clients” approach, but more for the personal benefits of blogging—the way it changed me in different, more subtle ways.

My post title:

7 Surprising Ways Blogging Can Change Your Life

9. Make a fresh but unusual analogy.

Comparing two unlike things and finding connections will make your reader sit up and take notice. In one post, I compared a blog community to kids at play in the schoolyard.  I combined a story from my years in teaching with a lesson about blogging.

My post title:

Building a Bloggers’ Community: What I Learned at Recess

In the second example, I was looking for ways little kids can inspire us as bloggers.

My post title:

5 Reasons First Graders Would Rule the Blogging World

On first thought, this might be taken as a look at the woefully lacking skills of some bloggers (although if you know me, you know I would never write a post like that). But when curious readers opened it up, it was a post on just how much small children can teach us about blogging—and life.

10. Write about a topic that forces your readers to take a stand.

I knew this one would get people riled up.I knew that most readers would be firmly on one side or the other. And, yes, I knew that using “F-bomb” would catch my readers’ attention. But I had no idea what a rich discussion would follow on the reasons bloggers use obscenities in their posts (or don’t).

My post title:

‘F-Bomb’ Blogging: A New Brand Strategy or Just Plain Lazy?

What about you?

Have any of these strategies worked for you?

Do you think they could ever backfire?

What headline strategies have I left out?