What’s In a Title?

What’s in a Title? Photo Courtesy of Nicolas Raymond.

What a person names a thing can shape how people perceives it.   As smart, savvy, business professionals, this is not a new concept to you.  You know this principle works for a business’ name, sales promotions and events, but is this something you consider when you create your blog posts title or description?

We have assisted in the naming of many events, promotional sales, product and services over the past few years.  Helping clients to identify a primary purpose and use has been the key in developing the most suitable name in those areas.  As public relations professionals, we’ve found much of the same principle and success for press releases we’ve submitted to the media outlets.  And in turn we’ve witnessed the same principle goes for sharing blog posts to other social media sites for our clients and the Above Promotions Company blog.

Since creating over 100 blog posts, we’ve noticed how titles for blogs and what the words we select to accompany the blog as a description of it seems to cause immediate feedback.  Kudos to you for the times you shared a post and managed to capture the attention of the people who will see your blog and read your article because they genuinely need the information you presented.  Those are the readers that make you feel good about writing, right?  However, there are the readers who help to remind you, you may have missed the mark based on their comments.  Through a few posts we saw what we didn’t expect to happen.  People who provide comments without viewing the actual blog or getting caught up on the title they missed the message.  Yikes!

When you choose to write on some topics, there are individuals who are experts in that area.  So much of an expert they can guess the content of your blog post based on your title.  Even if you’re providing an innovative prospective, they could be guessing wrong, but the title selected appeals to their know-how and they’ll forego reading and proceed to commenting.  Then there is also the reader who will see your blog title, know it must have good information and instead of reading 400-600 words, wants the cliff notes version.  Let’s not forget the reader who doesn’t read, but sees the topic is trending pretty high and wants to participate in the conversation, without reading it.

As you can see, you have a few types of people you need to keep in mind when creating a title for your blog post.  So what IS in a title?  Beyond:

• Creating a title that describes the blog,
• Introducing the main person,
• Using a phrase from the post or a quote,

Each title needs a little more oomph to intrigue potential readers.

Now you’re wondering what else do you need to add to your title or description?  Add a few of these things to your title or description and you’ll find some of the readers described above start to actually read your posts.

1. Include an emotional tie.
2. Create an intriguing yet vague title.
3. Play on words or a popular news story or known person.
4. Originality.
5. Double meanings.  (Be careful with this one.)

Bonus tips: Although this post is on blog titles and descriptions, add the characteristic of being concise with facts, and you’ll have a recipe for a good press release title as well.  Also, if you add at least a few SEO terms to the title or the blog’s description, you’ll get the search engine’s attention.

So, what do you think?  Ready to title your blog articles and descriptions now?

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Above Promotions is a full service publicity, marketing and promotions company, founded with the purpose to serve an array of clients that are looking to expand their presence in the marketplace.  From a local to international market, Above Promotions Company can provide the exposure that goes above your expectations.  Visitwww.abovepromotions.com today.