Whether we’d like to admit it or not, within most content marketers beats an editorial heart. When it comes to the part of the job where we get to turn our research into actual titles, spades of us can barely make our fingers behave as they slide across the keyboard, buzzing to put all of our creative juices into words. But with writing for web, and writing for a client, comes considerations that in our excitement, often tend to be forgotten. Not only do you want to effectively communicate the voice of the brand you’re writing for, but you want your titles to capture attention of your audience, and let them know that the article they’re about to read is of value to them.
Getting it right can be tricky, but can be nailed down into a systematic, step-by-step process by which to check your initial intention consistently aligns with what you come up with going forward.
Research, eavesdrop, analyse
It might sound onerous, but the first step in coming up with any kind of content plan is to do your research properly. You need to know who you’re writing for, exactly what you need to say about your topic, and get the research, facts, and statistics to say it in a way that’s believable. Assuming you’ve identified an audience to target, topics to write on, and understand the tone of the brand you’re writing for, the next step is to figure out what’s already being said: that is, to digitally eavesdrop, if you like, on what your competitors are saying.
A useful way to tackle this is simply by doing a few basic searches for the topic you’d like to write about, plus some long tail variations of it, and taking note of what you find. For instance, you might be working on a brief for a company that sells bikes, and you’ve decided that you want to write articles on bike care. Do a search for ‘bike care’ and see what comes up: which are the big sites you’re competing with, and what sort of results are you seeing? Are they home pages, landing pages, article titles, or product pages? How specific are they? Be sure to note down the sorts of article titles that come up: the more generic, the better, because it means that there’s space for more specific content. The trick is to come up with titles, and takes on the topic, that meet specific needs, and answer specific questions: ones that no-one is yet answering.
Do some more searches for variations on the topic, i.e. ‘how to care for your bike,’ ‘tips for bike care,’ ‘best tips for bike maintenance’ and see what comes up. Note down what you find, and then identify what’s not being said. Here’s where you’ll find the meat for your titles.
Ask the right questions
Now that you know what the competition is saying, and what’s not being said, you need to turn your attention back to your audience. What questions might they have regarding your product/service, and how do these questions change as they learn more about the topic? To map this out, we something called the ‘sales funnel’, which, despite its name, is just as useful for content creators as it is for sales people. It’s more or less just a way of mapping someone’s journey as they learn more about your topic, and then make increasingly specific decisions leading up to their actual engagement with your product or service.
Those coming in at the top of the funnel are less clued-up on the topic, and less aware of what you’re able to offer them in relation to it. You need to answer these bigger, broader questions in order to drive them down the funnel, and have them asking more specific questions, that you’ll then, in turn, answer, until they eventually become customers. So, for instance, someone at the very top of the funnel might be considering buying a bike, and might ask something like, ‘how much maintenance does a bike need?’ or ‘is buying a bike worth it?’ Further along, once decided a bike is for them, or perhaps, having already bought one, they might ask more specific questions, such as ‘how do I look after my bike chain?’ or ‘how do I silence my squeaky brakes?’ Against what you know isn’t being addressed by the competition, and the sorts of concerns your audience has (and therefore, the sorts of things they want to know), you’re ready to start drafting titles.
Getting grammar right
Whether you’re a fool for dangling participles or shudder every time you see a semicolon, grammar is an absolutely essential, paramount part of being able to write titles properly. In a title, you don’t have that much space to communicate exactly what your article is about, and effectively grab your audience’s attention, so you’ll need to smart with how you place words, and how you dictate they’re read using grammar.
First, think about the type of content you’re creating: for example, it might be a list piece, a blog post with a news hook, or a piece of ‘need-to-know’ informational content (in the biz’, we call this ‘sticky’, ‘cornerstone’, or ‘evergreen’ content). Depending on this, the structure of your title will change. There is no such thing as a rule of thumb for this: each article is different, and for a different audience. But, very loosely, there are some rules for best practice.
Where it comes to listicles and ‘how-to’s’, things are pretty straightforward: the audience knows and understands this format, and just wants to know exactly what you’re saying. Be as clear as possible, and as succinct as possible, so they are able to anticipate the exact value they will get from reading the article before they’ve read it. I.e.: ‘The ten best bike chain covers of 2015’. If your brand is a bit quirky, you can consider adding in subordinate clauses at your own discretion, to add a bit of interest: ‘The ten best bike chain covers of 2015 (and why you need all of them)’.
For blog articles, sticky content and news pieces, you’ll need to draw on your editorial skills a little more, and consider first the most important element of the piece you’re trying to communicate. This will be the ‘character’ of the piece, and should always feature in your title. Depending on the style your title is written in, your article will appear differently. Consider:
Bike wear and tear: the best ways to pamper your bike (Blog post: ‘bike’ is the subject and character, we know the article is specifically about bikes, but we don’t know exactly what we’ll learn yet)
Managing bike wear and tear: the best ways to pamper your cycle (Sticky content: ‘Managing’ is the character, we know the article will teach us to ‘manage’ something, and will therefore be informational)
Bike wear and tear managed by new cycle pampering methods (News style: ‘bike’ is valorised as the subject and character, and the most important element of the story. Based on audience knowledge of news headlines, they expect to be told something immediate and breaking)
With keen attention to audience expectations, and how exactly you want to tailor the voice you’re going to speak to them in, there’s nothing stopping you from coming up with spades of killer titles.
