From the title of an article or report to the subject heading of a memo or email, titles matter. A good title may be the difference between your intended audience ignoring your document or giving it a brief read. Ultimately it is your content that will hold your audience’s attention but your title needs to appeal to your audience and attract their attention, in order to give your content that opportunity.
. A Title That Stands Out and Attracts Attention If your document is digital and will be located online, your title will be available to potential readers through search engines or indexing databases. Your title’s ability to create interest is critical to your audience deciding to follow a link to your document. . It is important to create your title with your audience in mind. Ask yourself, what kind of keywords will they be using to search for the information that your document has? What kind of title will stand out, from a long list of search results, and persuade the reader to follow the link to your document. . Breaking Down the Creative Process of Brainstorming a Strong Title Your title needs to get to the heart of the matter within 12 words and yet hold persuasive appeal that will speak directly to your intended reader’s emotions and goals. So, let us break the process of creating a title into some simple steps:
Do You Have a Good Title? How to Tell: One way to find out if you have a good title is to use a simple online tool like the Advanced Marketing Institute's Headline Analyzer: . To use the analyzer, enter in your title. It will be scored on empathy and other factors which create audience interest. The site says the average professional headline “will have 30-40% EMV words… while the most gifted copywriters will have 50-75% EMV words in headlines.” It is possible to get a perfect score of 100% but that is fairly rare unless you have a very short title. . Another possible online tool is an SEO Web Page Analyzer. They describe the free tool they offer as a, “Web page analyzer [which] breaks down the structure and content of your web page and assesses the build quality and content quality from an accessibility, usability and search engine point of view.” . Perhaps the simplest and most accurate way to find out if you have a good title is to pilot test it. Do some usability testing with individuals who fit the profile of your intended audience. Also, how easy or hard is it to find your document doing an online search? . Need Some Help? Let me brainstorm your title for you! Contact me with your project and I will get right back to you! . Some Good Resources: Rajagopalan, Jayashree. (2014) “5 Simple Steps to Write a Good Research Paper Title.” Editage Insights https://www.editage.com/insights/5-simple-steps-to-write-a-good-research-paper-title . Kimmons, James. (2016). “Writing the Best Web Real Estate Content - The Title:You Have Just Seconds to Catch the Interest of the Reader.” The Balance. Web. https://www.thebalance.com/writing-the-best-web-real-estate-content-the-title-2866889
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Author: Deirdre WestAddressing Professional Writing Topics ArchivesCategories |