Lost Hiker Cuts Off His Arm To Save His Life is a real headline from the pages of the Denver Post. As you can imagine this story was read nationwide. An equally true headline would have been-Lost Hiker Found By Mountain Rescue. Do you really think that the second headline would have gotten national coverage like the original?
No, of course not. The same thing goes for Article Marketing. If you want your article read, spend the bulk of your time writing your headline and then launch into writing your article. Don't get me wrong your headline needs to be strong but, it must also conform to the content of your article.
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Article writing and headline writing are two very different things and the differences should not be missed. Most good articles are much like newspaper articles. They are clear and concise with the primary content in the first paragraph and the supporting details to follow. The newspapers around the country almost always have a copy desk who's primary function is to check the article for grammar and spelling and then write a strong headline to get the reader interested in reading the article.
I have found that although I may have an excellent article on an important area of Internet Marketing, if it does not have a super strong headline, the article does not get published and with my email list the open rate drops dramatically. At this point, I an spend much more time on the headline than I do the article. It may only take me 15 minutes to write an article but spend a half an hour or more working on the headline.
I, like most people, read the newspaper everyday but, rarely do I actually read more than just a few articles. For the most part, we scan the headlines and read the articles with the strongest headlines. In the business section, I normally read at least the first paragraph of every article because from experience I have found many good informational articles that just did not have good "heads"-newspapers slang for a headline.
Unfortunately on the net, scanning headlines and email subject lines is the rule of the day. We are constantly under siege with an inbox filled with spam and websites that have little or no real content. I am sure that I delete a lot of good content because I simply don't have the time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Not only that but as the internet grows ever more rapidly, the spam and the fluff content grow at an exponentially greater rate.
I don't know what the spam solution is but, I do know this, if you want your articles and emails read, you better have a good grasp on how to write a headline because more often than not, that is all the time we have to read. Spam and fluff and false promises have taken over the internet and those of us who write quality content are fighting what seems to be a losing battle. If fact, the whole internet which started out to be a research tool has become an unnavigable minefield.
Lost Hiker Cuts Off His Arm To Save His Life
Stan Pontiere has been an online marketer since 1997. At first part-time and then full-time since 2004. For further information on Marketing on a Shoestring please visit: http://www.marketingonashoestring.web44.net or my blog at: http://www.internetbizops.myccblog.com Please feel free to reprint this article as long as the article and resource information are left in tact.
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