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Surprising Blog Titles

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“If it is broken, don’t fix it”, reads the tile of an article in this month’s issue of Indianapolis Monthly. (Wait — what?) Experts advise, the article relates, that, if it’s going to cost more than 50 percent of the value to fix an item, you’re better off replacing it with a new one. The author was apparently following a piece of advice from the Rob Powers Business Blog: For a catchy title, use the unusual insight, delivering the unexpected. “Write a headline that makes people do a kind of double-take when they read it. Make them wonder and ask if it’s even possible,” says incomedieary.com, citing a National Enquirer piece titled “How Jack the weakling Slaughtered the Dance Floor Hog”.

In two-part titles, we teach at Say It For You, the first part (the “huh?”) needs a subtitle to make clear what the article is about. The second part (the “oh!”) clarifies what the focus of the piece is going to be. Another title from this month’s issue of Indianapolis Monthly is an example of a “Huh?-Oh!”. The “Huh?” – Street Wise (this part could be about a variety of things from infrastructure to drug trafficking). The “Oh!” – : “A new retail space angles to be both sanctuary and style inspiration”,  with the article providing details about new streetwear retailer Sanctuary by Streetly.

To a certain degree, in business blog writing, we don’t have the luxury of using totally “mysterious” titles, since search engine algorithms will be matching the phrases used in our titles with the terms typed into readers’ search bars. For that reason, composing business blog post titles involves a combination of art and science, arousing readers’ curiosity and, at the same time, satisfying search engines. The title “Wink Wink”, for example, while a cute name (for a piece about tweed multi-effect eye shadows, is unlikely to link to a search for makeup options. The “Oh!” part of the equally enigmatic “Jump In”, on the other hand, explains that that the article features Bloomington’s Hopscotch Kitchen. “Slice of Life” is about Bargersville Pizza and Libations, while “Make a Break” is about Tennesee’s Maker City. The winning combination, it seems is to arouse curiosity to the point that readers want to find out what the devil that first part of the title means.

Where a lesson learned in one field of activity is applied to a completely different field of activity, those headlines grab people’s attention because they offer a completely new perspective on something, Rob Powell goes on to explain. Promise readers to help them avoid pain or failure, solve problems, and gain insights, but the story begins with surprising blog titles.

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Ampersands OK in Blog Titles, But Not in Content

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“Use and, not ampersands, in business writing, even for emails. It is more professional,” Mary Morel advises in onlinewritintraining.com. Ampersands are for titles, signage, and where they are part of an organization’s branding, she adds.

Historical trivia bit – The ampersand was once the 27th letter of the alphabet In the early 18th century. Roman scribes, writing the Latin word “et” (meaning “and”) would link the E and the T. creating the shape of the ampersand. Centuries later, children reciting their ABCs found it confusing to say X,Y,Z, and”, so instead they would say “and, per se, ‘and'”, clarifying that the
ampersand was a separate letter.

The ampersand “adheres to a modern ethos of speed and brevity,” grammarbook.com explains. The ampersand helps save space, and fits in with other letters’ heights. “Still,” the authors conclude, “the more sparing you are with ampersands in formal writing, the better,”

Ampersand usage is a style detail many people don’t think important enough to merit attention, the probizwriters.com blog observes. “After all, if most people don’t know the rules, who will notice if you screw it up, right? Unfortunately, it’s little details like proper ampersand use that can make your writing look or feel clunky or dumb, even to readers who don’t know exactly why.”

Worst of all, speaker Todd Hunt believes, is inconsistent use, mixing “and” and “&” in the same writing piece.

As a blog content writing trainer, I think the most compelling reason to avoid ampersands in blog content was explained by Rebekah Wolf in medium.com: Copy devoid of characters is easier to skim and even easier to understand. As readers scan your blog post, their eyes are likely to be drawn to the character instead of to the most important words.

Of course, blog content writing should be more informal in tone than academic pieces, as we stress at Say It For You. Blogs are meant to be more conversational, more personal, and tend to be most effective using an “I-you”, author-to-reader tone. There’s an invisible line, however. Could the ampersand represent one of those subtle dividing points between casual and careless? Hmmm….

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Blog Titles to Tell “The Truth”

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Late last year, journalists at National Geographic Magazine teamed up with AARP to explore “how Americans perceive aging as we emerge from the COVID pandemic”. There were a number of great articles in the AARP Bulletin issue, but what was so interesting to me as a blog content writer was the way the word “truth” kept appearing in some of the titles: “The New Truth About Aging”,”The New Truth About Voting Laws.”

“Your blog headline is the first impression a reader will have with your content. It can be their reason for clicking or their reason for brushing your post aside.,” observes the createmytherapist website.com. “A catchy headline could cause someone to pause, pique their interest and make them hungry for more of the content they’ll find in your blog post. It’s also one of the most important factors for your search engine optimization (SEO)”.

For me as a blog content writer, Truth-Abouts make for compelling titles. There’s a hint of mystery, a promise an expose, perhaps – as a reader, I feel as if I am going to be given the “real scoop” There’s something enticing about a title promising to “bare the truth”, especially when it concerns a topic on which we didn’t expect there to be any secrets to speak of.

At Say It For You, we use “Truth-About’ blog posts with three basic purposes in mind:

1. To de-mystify a subject.
2. To myth-bust, addressing misunderstandings about a product or service
3. To offer actionable steps readers can take

Helping readers sort truth from myth is one important use for business blogs.  In the natural order of business, many misunderstandings about a product or service present themselves, and shining the light of day on misinformation shines light on your own expertise in your field.

Even when there is no final answer, blog content writers can summarize the different schools of thought and recap the research that is being done in the field. That in itself can go a long way towards making your blog a “go-to” place for readers seeking information relating to your industry or profession.

Blog titles “to tell the truth” can be a very useful content writing idea!

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Should Blog Titles Tell All?

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Besides being an absolutely fascinating read, Popular Science Magazine‘s special collector’s edition “Journey to the Future” offers a course in creating interesting titles (a topic of extreme interest, as you may imagine, to any blog content writer).

Of course, when it comes to blogs, the very first piece of information readers are going to receive is the title of the post. We want the searcher to click on the link, and of course we want search engines to offer our content as a match for readers seeking information and guidance on our topic. More than that, though, a blog post title in itself constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors. In essence, you’re saying, “If you click here, you’ll be led to a post that in fact discussing the topic mentioned in the title.

Here are some very straightforward titles from Popular Science Magazine:

  • Quantum Computing: the Future of AI
  • Will Robots Help or Harm? That’s Up to Humans
  • The Future of Transplants
  • Boosting Memory

    In blogs, as we teach at Say It For You, even the tone of the title constitutes a promise of sorts, telling the searcher whether the content is going to be humorous, satirical, controversial, cautionary, or simply informative. Then, for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes, the title needs to contain keyword phrases, which each of these titles does. At the same time, an important purpose of marketing blogs is inducing searchers to read the post, and for that, the title must arouse curiosity and interest.

Curiosity-piquing titles in this Popular Science issue include:

  • Get Ready to Sniff Disease
  • Engineered for Ethics
  • Running on Reckless
  • Eyes on the Earth
  • Re-defining Meat
  • Always on Duty

(Fascinating, curious titles, but you don’t really know what sort of content to expect in the article to come.)

One compromise is what I call the “Huh?-Oh!” two-part title, in which the first part is an attention-getter, with more of an explanation in the second part.

Examples of two-part titles from Popular Science:

  • All Together Now – Human Societies are the Technologies of the Future and Cooperation is the Fuel
  • The Extra-Dimensional Artist – When Visual Art and Augmented reality Merge

One popular misconception I run into as a business blogging trainer is that blog titles need to be what I would call “cutesy”, meaning they must have an enticing “ring” to them that arouses attention. My opinion – Cutesy belongs in baby clothes. Yes, blog post titles need to capture attention, but when readers click on a link, they need to find material that is congruent with what the title promised would be there.

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In Blogging for Business, Clarity is Better Than Originality

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We never want to alienate readers “just for the sake of it”, cautions Moriah Richard, editor of Writer’s Digest. Readers want to be surprised, but they don’t want to be tricked, she explains.

Camilla Allegrucci agrees. She has good news and bad news for writers all wrapped into one: “New ideas are not a thing”. Rather than original ideas, she says, you need an original voice. Sure, you might need some work to refine your “voice”, but you can express yourself in the best way your voice allows. When it comes to content writing, it’s all about answering your audience’s queries, so why reinvent the wheel when people are already telling us what they want to read about? Write from your own perspective and

An audio course for book authors, Brainstorming a Better Book Title, emphasizes the same concept. “The number one requirement for your book title is, does it clearly indicate what the book is about? If you can come up with a title that’s both clear and clever, all the better, Marci Yudkin says. But if you must choose between clarity and cleverness, clarity is more important for success.

“Cutesy is for dolls, not blog post titles,” is my own Say It For You motto. Yes, titles are important, very important. In fact, titles represent crucial elements in capturing the interest of both search engines and online searchers. But, aside from Search Engine Optimization considerations, the title of a blog post constitutes a set of implied promises to visitors: The main promise is simply this: lf you choose to click on this title, it will lead you to a blog post with information on the topic named in the title.

It helps to bring in less well-known facts about familiar things and processes, and even more when you suggest new ways of thinking about things readers already know. New ideas may not be “a thing”, but new insights and opinions can be. At Say It For You, our advice to business owners and their content writers is that you must offer an opinion, a slant, on the information you’re serving up to readers. No, it’s not “new information”, and you’re not re-inventing the proverbial wheel. What’s “new is the clarity of your views on the subject.

In blogging for business, clarity is better than originality – every time.

 

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