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Tossing Around the Terms to Tease Interest

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Their dad, Neil Krieger, had made up a word and had been using it ever since college to describe what happens when a grapefruit or orange squirts juice in your eye.  After he died, his children launched a digital marketing campaign to get the word “orbisculate” officially recognized in dictionaries.  Never having heard the word before, I definitely had a “squirt-in-the-eye” experience upon reading the title “Warning – This Fruit May Orbisculate!” in my copy of Reader’s Digest….

“Without a captivating, attention-grabbing title, Dale of bloggingherwy.com cautions, readers are less likely to click on your blog post.”   “People are always searching for comparisons between different things, whether it is products, software, ways of doing something, etc.”, she suggests.  At Say It For You, we do like using the “strange and unusual”, in both titles and content, to help spark readers’ curiosity.  On the other hand, we know, strange and unusual simply isn’t enough. Unless the information is somehow tied to the reader’s problem or need, unless the content makes clear why the writer cares about that information or why that information could make a difference to the reader, there can be no Call to Action.

In blogs or LinkedIn posts, 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. For SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes, the title needs to contain keyword phrases. At the same time, an important purpose of the title is to induce searchers to read the post, and for that to happen, the title must arouse curiosity and interest.

In the case of that tantalizing title in my Reader’s Digest , two factors played a role in  the words quickly capturing my attention:

  • The word “warning!” itself served as a “grabber”.
  • The absurdity of the implication that a fruit could cause deadly harm spiked curiosity
  • The almost dire-sounding term “orbisculate” (Was this deadly fruit going to orbisculate me??)

While content writers’ ultimate mission is to address the needs visitors had typed into their search bars,” tossing around the terms” in order to tease interest can be an effective content marketing move.

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Curiosity May Kill the Cat, But It’s Great for Content Marketing

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Blogs can be a valuable tool for business growth, Teri Ambrose observes in score.org. “By writing blog posts on topics that are relevant to their industry, businesses can show that they are knowledgeable and invested in the discussion”. But showing how knowledgeable the business owner or practitioner publishing the blog is  – that’s hardly enough. It’s the audience’s curiosity gap that creates a marketing win.

According to the academic George Lowenstein, humans become curious when there is a gap in their knowledge, stimulating them to “fix” this state by acquiring the missing knowledge. One way content marketers can captivate reader interest, therefore, is by including intriguing, little-known facts within their articles and posts.

“The curiosity gap captivates readers by emphasizing the gap between known and withheld information.” Copyhackers.com explains, which can be done by:

  • introducing something new that our existing knowledge can’t explain
  • starting a story, pausing at a climactic moment, and delaying the conclusion of it
  • withholding key information for a manageable period of time
  • introducing an idea, action or concept… and connecting it with an unexpected outcome or subject

    Unlike those who seek to use information tidbits as “clickbait”, at Say It For You we recommend using them as a “bonus”. Sure, visitors arrive at your post seeking information on specific topics.  But, once your opening lines have reassured those visitors that they’ve come to the right place, it’s a great idea to use some unlikely connections, even unrelated but fascinating tidbits of information to give readers a sense of being ahead of the crowd. They now have some unusual piece of “inside information” or amusing tidbit to jog their memory, expand their knowledge, and share with friends.Curiosity may kill the cat, but it’s great for content marketing!

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Self-Help Titles Teach Variety

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Browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble, I came across an entire three-shelf section of self help books. The variety of titles was astounding, perfect examples of how a single topic can be approached in a plethora of ways:. Here are just a few of the titles:

  • Already Enough
  • Wild Calm
  • Yay All Day
  • Wander the Stars
  • Slow Down, Take a Nap
  • What’s Behind the Blue Door
  • You Meet You
  • Always Change a Losing Game
  • The Other Significant Others
  • Atomic Habits

When it comes to content marketing, all the titles show above could be classified as “Huhs?”, meaning that each needs a subtitle to make clear what the book is actually about. “Oh!” titles, we teach at Say It For You, are self-explanatory, and from an SEO (search engine optimization) standpoint, make a direct connection to the query readers type into their search bar.

For either straightforward or “Huh?-Oh!” titles of blog posts, one way to engage readers is using the sound of the words themselves, repeating vowel sounds (assonance) or consonant sounds (alliteration), so that searchers use their sense of hearing along with the visual.

Just as titles “grabbed” me as a bookstore browser, it’s important to have “ringing” in blog post titles, we teach. Titles matter in two ways:

  1. For search – keywords and phrases help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or professional practice has to offer.
  2. For engagement – after you’ve been “found”, you’ve gotta “get read”! (Of course, no clever title can substitute for well-written, relevant content that provides valuable information to the readers.)

But when blog content writers try being too clever, too general, or too cliched, that’s not good, either, Authormedia points out in “Top 5 Blog Title Mistakes Authors Make” The overriding criterion is whether you can deliver on your headline promise in the body of the post.

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