Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

Just as is true in newspapers, business blogs can contain different types of stories and different types of headlines, l explain in corporate blogging training sessions. I found examples of three different title types in Discover Magazine’s May issue.

One category, like newspaper headlines, simply conveys what content readers should expect to find in the article to follow:

• Evolution – of Humans, of Tech
• Valley Fever: The Hidden Epidemic
• How I Took Down Sharpshooters in the Pacific

Such  very descriptive title types, while  not “cutesy” or particularly engaging, can be highly effective in business blogging because they: a) are short and to the point  b) use keyword phrases that match up well to what a readers may have typed into the search bar and
c) ensure that the content will “deliver on the promise”.

A second category of title that I saw in Discover arouses readers’ curiosity, but gives only the barest hint of the content to follow:

• Cunning Fish Camo
  The article describes fish called “lookdowns” that are able to manipulate polarized light in order to confuse predators.
• Supernova’s Shocking Second Act
  This heads an article about a stella nova, an astronomical phenomenon where radiation is being emitted from a stellar explosion that happened more than 450 years ago. Again, this title arouses curiosity, but gives just a hint of the article’s content.

The temptation, of course, in selecting a title for a business blog post, is to go for the “catchiest”-sounding word combination rather than the most descriptive. A compromise is to use a combination of a “Huh?” to get attention and then an “Oh!” subtitle to make clear what the post is actually going to be about.

I found several examples of a third category of title: the built in call to action – the blogger names the problem and implies that a solution is to be discussed in the blog post.

•  Feed the World!
• How to Be a Better  Negotiator

Call-to-Action titles in business blogs mobilize readers to do something and/or learn something.

Whichever type of title you choose for a blog post, remember that titles create expectations!

Leafing through an Ivy Tech Community College textbook by the name of “Breaking Through College Reading”, I noticed an exercise designed to teach students how to become better readers by differentiating among topics, main ideas, and supporting details. Since, as blog content writers, one big challenge we face is selecting the best title for each of our blog posts, I thought the exercise I found in the reading textbook would be very relevant. 

The lesson quotes the following passage from Biology, by Neil Campbell.

“Humpback whales strain their food from seawater.  Instead of teeth, these giants have an array of brush-like plates called baleen on each side of their upper jaw.  The baleen is used to sift food from the oceans.  To start feeding, a humpback whale opens its mouth, expands its throat, and takes a huge gulp of seawater.  When its mouth closes, the water squeezes out through spaces in the baleen, and a mass of food is trapped in the mouth.  The food is then swallowed whole, passing into the stomach, where digestion begins.  The humpback’s stomach can hold about half a ton of food at a time, and in a typical day the animal’s digestive system will process as much as 2 tons of krill and fish.”

Students are asked to label each of four possible titles for this passage as being either correct, too broad, or containing only a detail (versus a topic).

I invite my blog readers to take this “test” and to choose the best title for the Biology piece from among the following:

1. Humpback Whales
2. Baleen for Teeth
3. The Digestive System of the Humpback Whale
4. How Whales Filter Food

Now, before you label any of the four as your “final answer”, consider the following definitions offered in the textbook:

A topic is a word or phrase that describes a subject or a general category. “The main idea, in contrast, is a complete sentence that states the topic and adds the writer’s position or focus”. The supporting details are the specifics that develop the topic and the main idea.

In composing business blogs, we need to keep several goals in mind.  We want to write engaging titles, we want to include keyword phrases to help with search, we want to be short and to the point, and we want to use power words.  The overriding goal, though, in composing a title has to be making promises we are going to be able to keep in the body of the blog post itself.

Did you choose title #3, “The Digestive System of the Humpback Whale”? That’s the one that includes the writer’s focus in the paragraph.  #1 is too broad, #2 far too specific, and #4 limited to only a portion of the paragraph’s content.

There’s a “biology” to selecting effective business blog post titles!