What’s in a title? Everything. A title embodies the essence of your article, ebook or blog post in only a few words meant to grab a person’s attention immediately. Even as I write this, I keep tweaking my own title to make sure it fits.
A catchy title isn’t good enough, though. You can have a great title, but if it falls flat and the reader is left feeling empty, you may have lost a potential sale or future client. If you have a title that does nothing for your article, that’s exactly what you’ll get – nothing. No one will bother to read your article no matter how great it is.
A title needs to be catchy, but if you don’t deliver the content that goes with it, your article is dead in the water.
A blog post by Christopher M. Knight outlines a quick checklist for choosing a title:
- Did you fulfill your readers’ expectations in the article body?
- Did you answer the question you posed in your article title?
- Does every paragraph of your article relate in some way to delivering on what you promised in the title?
- Are you wasting the readers’ time by purposely baiting with a juicy title but lots of filler in your article body?
- Does your article GET TO THE POINT? (instead of rambling on and on and on?)
- Are you an expert who delivers more value in the article body than you expect to receive in return?
- Did you bite off more than you can deliver in your article title? Should you narrow your topic further?
Having gotten to the point, I won’t ramble on with a lot of filler. Before you save that article you’re working on, go through the checklist to see whether you’re delivering what you promised. It’ll only take a few moments, and you’ll be glad you did.
