Wondering how the best headlines get written? We’re sharing our top tips and 10 headline formulas to help you craft a viral masterpiece.
Generating great titles and headlines are a crucial piece of the content puzzle. To your reader, your headline is the first impression, your way of reaching out to them through the noise of other search engine results or social media posts.
If you want a guaranteed way to come up with effective headlines every single time, then you’re in the right place. We’ll examine how to write a headline that commands readers’ attention, and look at some headline formulas and examples you can emulate.
We’ve covered some of the best practices for writing attention-grabbing headlines and, up next, we’ll share some foolproof formulas you can try. But, first, let’s go over how to write headlines.
Without being misleading, summarize the main point of your content and, more importantly, what your audience will gain from checking it out. You have to have a clear, condensed description in mind first before you can write a concise but complete headline for your audience. This will help you stay on track and ensure that your headline accurately represents the content of your article.
What tone does your content or copy have? Is it friendly or casual? Persuasive or professional? Whatever description you land on, your headline should have the same tone so that readers aren’t thrown off by huge differences between the headline and body of your piece.
If you really want to build consistency across all pieces of content, we recommend using the Brand Voice feature of Jasper. This allows you to create and save your desired tone and style by scanning an uploaded document, copy and pasted text or by scanning your entire website.
Here’s an example of the Brand Voice feature in action where we scanned the entire Jasper blog:
Using the best practices we mentioned above, whenever you can, create at least 10 options per piece. That way, you can get past the first few basic ideas to the more creative, eye-catching, and compelling versions. (Alternatively, you can let Jasper do this heavy lifting for you, which we’ll walk you through later.)
A great tool for this is CoSchedule Headline Studio, which scores headlines based on a bunch of criteria such as length, sentiment, use of power words, and even SEO potential. Pop the options you’re considering into Headline Studio to compare and contrast their strengths and weaknesses, and choose from headlines with green scores above 70+.
Your headlines should always accurately represent the content of your article. While it's tempting to use sensational language or promises to entice readers, this can lead to disappointment and distrust if the content doesn't deliver on those claims. Be honest and authentic in your headline and let your high-quality content speak for itself.
If you’re looking for interesting ways to write your headline, try one of these 10 easy formulas for creating headlines for any kind of article.
The how-to headline works because the audience is often desperate for help. Still, it’s important to elevate your how-to headline because there’s usually stiff competition on search engine result pages (SERPs).
You can help your headline stand out by being more specific, highlighting how fast your article helps, who your target audience is, or what shortcuts your process helps the user through.
Here are three examples with our specific benefits bolded:
No one likes to be caught slipping, so ears perk up when you highlight a potential error that readers are at risk of (or already) making. The three headline ideas below are for the same (fictional) post about mistakes first-time business owners make:
Readers are always looking for posts comparing products or services. However, this template can also work to compare non-tangible ideas like approaches to business, lifestyle preferences, and the like. And it doesn’t always have to be a boring “This vs. That” presentation.
Here are some examples:
This is the Ultimate Guide 2.0. Having the phrase “need to know” in your headline tells your readers that you’re covering all their bases. Try one of the following formats:
This headline asks readers questions they may or may not have answers to — questions the article promises to answer. Here are some examples to fill in the blanks:
There’s no better formula to share a personal story than this one. Use one of the templates below to share your personal successes or horror stories:
This headline formula uses the word “why” without actually asking a question. Although most readers want to know how to do things, many of us also simply want to know why some things work the way they do. Here are some (fictional) examples:
This template works for pretty much the same reason as the common mistakes one: people like to be in the know. Unveil your audience’s common misconceptions with these formulas:
The basic list post is a classic like the how-to article. To make your headline for these posts more effective, pack on the power words. For example:
Using a colon, you can combine two headline styles for maximum impact. Here’s how it works:
Don’t take our word for it, see what real-life viral headlines are made of. We’ve dug out five headlines that fulfill our criteria and done some research to see how they fared with social shares, backlinks, and overall traffic.
The headline for Sumo’s power word post is eye-grabbing because of that enormous number! Every reader is going to want to see all those power words, if only to satisfy their curiosity. Ahrefs backlink tool shows that the post has a whopping 1800 backlinks to its name, showing how widely read and valuable it is.
This Shopify headline uses a how-to and “all you need to know” formula in one — and it works! In the last year since it’s been published, the post has had over 800 social media shares, according to Shareaholic.
What a pointed question! This short post has an intriguing question as its headline and proceeds to answer using a flowchart. Ahrefs reports that the post has been linked back to over 350 times.
This Groove HQ post shares sage advice with specific details in its headline. It’s no wonder that the post has had over 1000 shares since it was published.
Another two for one headline style, this one touches on a sensitive topic and pits two ideas against each other. It ends with a probing question that might make some readers uncomfortable. It seems to resonate with readers as it’s been shared over 275 times, according to Shareaholic.
Even with all the formulas in hand, writing the perfect headline is no easy task. If you have to think up multiple headline options every day, you may be in need of a headline generator. These tools implement some of the formula types discussed in this article.
However, if you want to go beyond formulaic options and gain a sidekick that actually thinks and generates unique content, try AI writing assistant, Jasper. Jasper has over 52 writing templates, at least three of which are designed to craft intriguing headlines: The Perfect Headline, Facebook Ad Headline, and Google Ad Headline templates.
Jasper also has templates for writing email subject lines and website subheadings — all forms of headlines that can be challenging to write.
Here’s the Perfect Headline template at work, in this case, to create some blog post headlines:
Notice how it automatically uses several of our recommended headline formulas such as ‘How to Do Anything’ and ‘Sage Advice’ with little to no effort on your part? That’s the beauty of using Jasper.
Ready to get some help with your headlines? Sign up for Jasper to start writing viral headlines right now. And, if you need some more help understanding the way the AI works, check out Jasper Jumpstart.
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