When you encounter a piece of content online, the first thing you likely come across is that content’s title. That title has to be snappy, relevant, and persuasive enough to convince you to click on.
With this in mind, choosing the right title is an essential ingredient in a piece of content’s overall success. After all, if the title’s bad, nobody clicks through, and you lose the opportunity to make a connection with your audience.
There’s a surprising amount of wisdom to share about content titles, even though they should generally be no longer than 55 characters maximum. Let’s explore 9 considerations you need to bear in mind to create highly magnetic content titles.
1. How is Your Title Going to Look Across Different Platforms?
One place to start is to be self-aware about where that title is going to appear in future. Do you rely on search visibility? You’ll need to be mindful of how your blog or video appears in relevant search results; and any character limits you’ll need to abide by. Here’s a useful Google search result preview tool that you may find useful.
Likewise, if you rely on social media shareability, make yourself aware of how titles, meta descriptions, and any related imagery appear in automated social media previews for your most popular platforms.
If you rely on backlinks from other websites then they are largely free to link to you however they see fit – for better or worse!
2. Include Popular Keywords
If you’re creating content about a topic, you likely have a good reason to do so. In most cases this means you’ve done a bit of keyword research and found a highly competitive, relevant search term that you’d like to capitalise on.
Even if you’re not focusing on search distribution, carrying out keyword research is a good way of gauging demand for topics online.
When you have identified an in-demand keyword, try to establish which conjugation of that key term is the most popularly searched and use that in your title. Steer clear of splitting longer-tail keywords up as you might risk the term’s effectiveness and visibility on search-driven or algorithmic platforms.
3. Understand Your Audience and Their Priorities
In the B2B realm, your content is there to attract people to you and your brand. In order to create that content, you need to understand your audience, know their needs from you, and know what folks like them generally want to know about a provider in your position.
You can do this in a number of ways, and it will undoubtedly help you with far more than just creating great content titles.
Personally, I love getting to know the individual audiences that I focus on. I attend events especially for the tech verticals where my ideal clients tend to congregate, I listen to their thoughts on business and marketing and tech, and use that information to create things that I know will be interesting to them.
Never underestimate the power of desk research either, especially now many of us are online. I also can’t stress enough the power of a good survey, a quick social media poll, or simply asking someone relevant you know for input.
But this isn’t just knowing your audience, you need to establish their priorities too. There’s no point creating something that speaks to a problem that isn’t particularly high on their to-do list at the moment, when you can be creating something about an issue that’s keeping them up at night right now.
Also, priorities change, especially when you’re talking about tech solutions. What was a demoralising IT problem 5 years ago may be rendered moot by just general developments in technology since then.
And never forget the power of “you” – in your case, that’s the audience you’re writing or speaking to. If you can address the reader directly in your title – such as “why you should…” or “what you need to know…” then do!
4. Use Numbered Lists
Ooh, Brains love a good list. There has been plenty of research and think pieces on how to use numbered listicles in your content marketing. So let’s explore some of the common thinking here. Two great sources for this information can be found over on BBC and Wix.
Firstly, there can be a lot of ambiguity in the internet, life, the universe, and everything. But when you see a post, say one titled “5 ways solution abc is best for manufacturers,” you know exactly what to expect. To vastly boil down a lot of neuroscience here, brains like this predictability and order. This lack of ambiguity also feels a little less taxing in an increasingly disorientating online space.
Lists are easily scannable, so if you’re busy or in the middle of something else, you can always check out the top line list items and come away with something at the very least.
And in our busy lives, list articles make it easier to check your progress as you’re going through the list. Not just in text form, but here in video too, with progress bars and the addition of things like chapters on YouTube and Spotify.
There’s also some wisdom around the particular numbers you use. An article about “one big thing” implies authority and simplicity. Even and round numbers feel grounded and reliable, and odd numbers feel a little more unpredictable and creative. Tens and divisions or multiplications of ten feel rounded, remainerless, and complete to us. And, of course, different cultures around the world have their own lucky and unlucky numbers that it pays to be aware of.
However, I advise you not to get your heart set on a particular number for any content title. Yes, be aware of these mental preferences, but don’t pad out or compress an article just to hit a certain number of points (or word count, for that matter).
5. Create Novelty & Bounce
This one is optional, but it can help you stand out from the crowd. If you are able, try to give your title a bit of levity and bounciness. You can do this by leaning on alliteration, rhyming, maybe even playing with the rhythm of the words you use.
Though, of course, it all needs to be consistent with your brand’s tone of voice. If your brand is quite straight-laced and professional, you have less scope to play around with this when compared to more lively, energetic brands.
6. Use the Simplest Language Possible
This one should go without saying. Don’t try to blind people with science. If they don’t understand your title, or are in any way unsure, that could well turn them away. And voila, you’ve already lost them.
Focus on clearly explaining the value that your reader will receive by consuming that piece of content. Remember you only have 50-60 characters at the very most, including spaces, so make them count!
7. Use Power Words & Emotion
Even in relatively dry B2B spaces, we can still use touches of emotion which encourage your audience to click. Though it’s unlikely to be the kind of stirring language instilled by a skilled public speaker or the manufactured, pearl-clutching shock and outrage of mass tabloid-y media, there are still emotive cues available to us.
Personally, I quite like to use sensory words where possible, tying the topic to something you can see, hear, touch, imagine, smell! It helps to make the topic feel grounded and tangible. People like explanations too, so “why” and “how” can be quite powerful – as can “because.”
Coshedule has a great resource, packed with emotive power words, that I’ll leave down in the description. Their Headline Studio tool is excellent too.
8. Avoid Clickbaity Promises
Clickbait may have moved on from the salacious “nUmBeR sEvEn WiLl ShoCk yOu” slop of the past, but the “artform,” if you can call it that, is still well and truly going strong. Any idle scroll down Facebook or TikTok will show you that, and AI has only made the problem worse.
Never title your posts with a big, attention grabbing promise, only to break it in the article. It’s a cheap way to get engagement and it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of those who were hoping for answers.
It’s an especially terrible look if you are selling a B2B service, especially a technical one which may be confusing enough for your clientele. In that field, you’re largely creating content to increase your reach and to build trust. Sensationalism and broken promises actively creates mistrust – making clickbait a real “shooting yourself in the foot” move.
It might also be worth staying aware of the latest clickbaity titling trends, just to make sure your content doesn’t accidentally fall into the same trap.
9. Optimise & Edit Your Title Over Time
Always track how your new piece of content performs over time. Many platforms let you tweak your title if it doesn’t get the attention you would have originally liked.
You may have seen on YouTube that some creators release a video and then change the thumbnail or tweak the title a bit on the fly as they are getting engagement data rolling in. Same concept!
So if you’re a little disappointed in a post’s performance (after you’ve given it a little while to do the rounds) then try again with another title, or indeed another thumbnail if you’re working with a video. However, always record when you made this change so you can compare and contrast which option worked better.
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