Did you know that when you publish a book with a major publishing house – it is not the authors who choose headline and book titles. The publishing houses have experts called ‘copywriters’ whose job is to write attention grabbing headlines.

I created this blogpost as a reference for myself for the best tools and resources to help me in writing headlines.

I am a big advocate of keeping things simple, so if you are in a hurry and you don’t want to read through the whole blog post, you can simply use this killer formula for your headlines:
Headline Formula = Number or Trigger word + Emotional Adjective + Keyword + Promise
Here is an example: “7 Easy Ways to Grow Your YouTube Channel Subscribers by 200%”

If you would like to dive deeper in the art of writing killer headlines, read on!

Concepts

When writing a blog or a creating a script for your vlog, you would need to keep two concepts in mind: Copywriting & Search Engine Optimization.

Copywriting

What is copywriting. The word copywriting originated in the world of publishing. Rather than meaning that the writer “copied” the content, copywriting means that it is content that is intended to be copied across the publishing house’s various channels (newspapers, prints, online etc.). So a content which is to be reproduced and printed in the newspaper or ad for all to read is called “sales copy”.

Copywriting is the act of writing content with an eye on advertising. Here is an easy and proven formula to help you remember the key copywriting principles which are summarized by this formula: AIDA:

A: Attention Grabbing: Your content should immediately grab the reader’s or viewers attention.
I: Interest Arousing: Going through your content, the reader should feel absorbed and captivated.
D: Desire Generating: The content should create a desire in the minds of the reader to take an action (e.g. purchase your product)
A: Call to Action: The content should prompt the reader (or viewer of your video) to take an action.

When you write your content, book or vlog script with the AIDA principles I have explained above, then your content becomes a “sales copy”. Not only is it a great reflection of your creative ideas, it is also more appealing and will result in the actions you want from your target audience.

In short, the content should always be about the benefits you or your product provides for the reader . Keep your content simple and give the reader the facts to help make a decision by creating a clear image in their minds about your product or services.

The final and most important point about writing content is that it should appeal to a reader’s emotions instead of simply giving them hard facts.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Writing a content with the principles of copywriting in mind is one half of the puzzle. The other half is to make it such that search engines (e.g. Google) will give it a high ranking. This is where SEO comes in.

SEO means that you identify some key words relevant to your product first. As an example, if I am writing a book about marketing, I will choose “marketing strategy” as a keyword.

The next step in SEO is to write such content, that when people search for the keyword “marketing strategy”, Google will surface your content at the top of the search results. Obviously this will result in more traffic and the possibility of more sales for you.

The following resources will help you fine tune your headline such that it follows the principles of copywriting as well as SEO.

Resources for Writing Headlines

• Focus on Copywriting: CopyBlogger: How to Write Magnetic Headlines This page also has links to other articles on writing headlines.
• Focus on Search Engine Optimization: Neil Patel’s Step by Step Guide to Writing Powerful Headlines
• Here is yet another set of tips from the guru of SEO, Neil Patel:Headline Psychology: 8 Tricks to Attract User Attention
• Use this formula as a checklist: Number or Trigger word + Emotional Adjective + Keyword + Promise
  Here is an example: “7 Easy Ways to Grow Your YouTube Channel Subscribers by 200%”
• Here is a master list of Formulas you can use: 47 Headline Examples: Steal These Nifty Formulas From Popular Blogs
• 10 Headline Forumulas that Work
• 19 Headline Writing Tips for More Clickable, Shareable Blog Posts
• Your headline needs to touch the heart of your audience, reader or follower – Here are the 7 emotional triggers – (Belonging, Hope, Guilt, Vanity, Fear, Lust, Greed) and examples on how to use them. This post is about email conversion but it applies to any writing including headlines. https://blog.getresponse.com/emotional-triggers.html

11 Tools to Help You in Writing Magnetic Headlines

1. Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator
2. Link Bait Generator
3. Portent Title Maker: https://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker
4. Use a thesaurus to find synonyms to make your content interesting and non-repetitive: Thesaurus
5. Find words that rhyme to make your headlines even more fun: http://www.b-rhymes.com/
6. Use this tool to check if your headline appeals to emotions: Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer
7. CoSchedule’s headline analyzer
8. Generating Ideas from Idioms, Quotes & Cliches: http://www.onlinesales.co.uk/tools/tools/ideas-from-idioms.php
9. Topical Brainstorm
10. Cliche Finder
11. Thrive Headline Optimizer

Summary

The above resources will help you transform your content into great sales copy.

I am positive this will result in growing the sales of your book or bringing more visibility to your blog/YouTube channel.