2014 WRITE: BLOG: Work your title. It's where your writing meets the road

Work your title. 
It's where your writing meets the road
Does your title catch the reader?
What does your title say about your article?
Three minutes to more effective titles
Make sure the title of your article is working for you
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Your goal for the title:

• Catch the attention (Hook)  of people in your target (Call) audience
• Get people to want to read the beginning 
• Offer something (Benefit) that you actually deliver at the end
• Give the reader a name that is both memorable and mentionable

Your toolbox 

• A hook
• A call to your target audience
• Offer benefit 
• Several of the above

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A hook

• Catches attention
• Arouses curiosity
• Includes novelty and humor
• Suggests more than it tells

Some ways to write a hook (curiosity)

• Take a common expression, change a word
• What's the article about?  Play with those words
• What is the subject like?  Why?
• Take an irrelevant familiar term.  Make it apply to the article

Example

• where the rubber meets the road
• where your writing meets the road

The call

• Tells who the article is written for
• Tells why the article would interest them

Some ways to write a call

• List the names that apply to your audience or what they do
• Use a thesaurus if you need to
• Use some of these terms in the title
• Use a verbs as well as nouns
• Mention actions

Example

• Audience: writers
• where your writing meets the road

Offer benefit

• Tells what benefit the article offers

Some ways to offer benefit

• What is your article about?
• Why is that of interest to your audience?
• How will your audience benefit from your article?
• Put that in the title

Example, this article

• About giving a title to an article
• The title catches or loses the reader
• Help in writing titles
• Is that in the title above?  

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