A shit headline means no readers, even if you have a great story

How do I know? Because I’ve written plenty of shit headlines myself. And I still find myself doing it. I’m improving though. Maybe you need to as well.

So, you’ve written a fantastic story, one of your best ever. You’re so excited anticipating an avalanche of views that you can’t sleep. This is it. This is the story that means you finally get noticed.

You wake up early to check your stats. Surely there’s some kind of glitch with stats, so you refresh your page again and again. But nothing changes. It must be true. Your story only got 3 views. 3! That’s not a typo. Where are the 100s or 1000s of others that you were anticipating?

The answer is simple. You wrote a shit headline. So shit that readers glanced at it and kept scrolling.

That, my dear reader, is what happens when you don’t put any effort into writing a great headline.

It’s your headline that helps readers decide whether your story is worth clicking on or not. This is your one chance to entice the reader to stop scrolling and click on your story.

If you can get that part right, the rest is easy..