How I Enticed You To Read this Article and You Can Do the Same with Your Audience

Posted by PChip | Published in: Power Writing

For the introduction article in this series I wrote a title that let you know I was going to show you how to do something - namely how to write article titles.  A compelling thought in itself, but not one that is strong enough to encourage visitors to stay here and read more.  The title would have been too weak had I left it at “How to Write Good Headlines” and unfortunately this is where many business people lose their audience.  How-to articles are great for you to provide to your readers.  But if they don’t stick around to read it, you’ve pretty much wasted your time, no matter how much meaty information is in your article! 

Tell your Audience about the Benefits Up Front

Your how-to article will give examples, offer suggestions, or guide the reader through specific steps for accomplishing something.  If it’s written well, it will also explain or give proof of how the information in the article, will benefit the reader.  This part of the article is sometimes mentioned near the end in a summary type format.  Why wait until the end of an article to share the benefits with your readers?  Instead, put this information right up front - in the title.

The Key to Writing a Great “How To” Title

Making a how-to title work best for you is accomplished by compounding the how-to part with what I call a benefits statement.  The title I used in the introduction to this series, “How to Write Headlines that Keep Your Customers Coming Back for More” is an example of how this equation works.  I simply used the compound word “that” in my title, followed by a compeling statement telling the reader what benefits are found in the article.  If you read the article, then I wrote a successful title.

The key to my success was in using the equation [How to] + [That] + [Expected Benefit] which ultimately equaled a title that caused the reader (you) to do what I wanted.  In this case I wanted you to read what I had written.  I didn’t wait until the end of my article to tell my audience the benefits of reading this series.  By reading the article and putting into practice the recommendations in this series of articles, they will see their readers return to their site for more great info.  That’s the benefit statement that I tacked on the end of my title: “keep your customers coming back for more” and it’s the main piece that completed the equation.

How-To Articles, Books, and Tutorials are a Dime a Dozen

With so many how-to articles in our industry, how do you make your headline stand out from the crowd?  Use the formula - it works!  Here’s examples of what your titles might look like:

• How to Apply a Drop Shadow that Looks Realistic
• How to use Templates to Create More Layouts in Less Time
• How to Create e-books that Put Dollars in Your Pocket

Wait!  There’s More…

I’ve shown you how to write a compelling how-to title.  But I haven’t told you how I enticed you to read this article.  The close relative of the How-To title is the How I (did such and such) title.  I used it in the title for this article:  “How I Enticed You To Read this Article and You Can Do the Same with Your Audience”

This popular title lends itself to sharing a personal experience with your readers.  Which is a great way to attract like-minded customers.  If someone can relate to you or a situation that you present - they are more likely to stick around and find out more.  This title looks like:

• How I Created a 12-piece Digi Kit in Less than an Hour
• How I Used Zen-Cart and Increased my Sales
• How I Balance my Home Life with my Digi-Designing

Notice how each of these titles also imply a fix for a problem or a benefit to the reader?  Doing more in less time, increasing sales, balancing home life with work — these are all things your readers can probably relate to and would like to see how you resolved them.  The first title I had for this article was ”How I Enticed You To Read this Article” and it might be an okay title at first glance.  However, by adding the “You Can Do the Same with Your Audience”, I’ve told my readers, up front, the benefit of reading this article.  This gave them a reason to read what I had written.

Get it?  Yeah - me too.  :)  So I changed my article title and you continued to read.  That - my friend, is how I enticed you read this article, by following my own advice and telling you up front what benefit you’d get from reading on.

As a wrap up to this article I want to emphasize that the well written “How” title(s) merely draws the reader into the first part of your article.  They are written specifically to help get your readers to make the decision to read on.  To keep your readers involved there’s still the important - the most important - task of following up with an article that’s true to your title.  If you pull your audience in with a promise of something and then not deliver — you won’t have a happy customer!

The next article in this series will present more powerful title choices and some writing tips for your content format.  Like a great digi-layout, there’s a few tricks of the trade that can turn an okay product into a fabulous one - and keep your customers yearning for more!

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This article was posted by PChip on 31 Jul 07, published in: Power Writing
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