I won’t read your post if the title sucks
November 6, 2007
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Each day I spend a limited amount of time reading feeds on a variety of different topics. Remember that the keyword in that previous sentence is limited.
I currently have about 83 feeds that I subscribe to in Google Reader, and when I’m reading, I look at the title, and that determines whether I read the rest of the article. Nothing else. If the title doesn’t get my attention, I move on.
Brutal, eh?
And I hardly think that I’m alone in this. If you think that I should cut down on the number of feeds that I read in order to spend more time on what I do subscribe to, remember this: there are a LOT of people that subscribe to many more feeds than I do. Robert Scoble, last I heard, subscribed to around 1000 feeds. How much time do you think you have to get him to read a post?
One of the things that I’d always heard in school was that one of the most powerful people at any newspaper is the headline writer, simply because what they wrote determined if you read the rest of an article.
And for blogging, it’s the exact same, if not more so.
It doesn’t matter if you write an epic blog post and then blow the title. You may as well have not written the post at all, because the number of people who will read it is probably much lower than the number who should read it.
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November 6th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
this is one of the main things i’ve been working on, because i realized that when i started out i was using fairly abstract-ish titles for my posts. once i signed up for BloggingZoom, i realized that i would need to change that habit quickly if i wanted people to even read the rest of the description on my submission. it seems to be working so far, so i must agree with you on this.
well said, sir.
November 6th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Glad to hear that things are working better. I didn’t even realize how much the title of a post was having an impact when I was reading feeds until I actually thought about it.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Excellent point Rod. I didn’t realize that I do the same thing with my feeds until you just mentioned it. I found you here while skimming the post titles on BZ - ie. your title caught my eye over several that didn’t.
All the best,
Grizzly
November 6th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
This title is probably the greatest title I’ve ever seen. (seriously) I wish I would have come up with it.
I’m sure this post will get to the Blogging Zoom homepage before too long.
I personally love that you wrote this up because so many bloggers don’t realize that it’s their headlines that are holding them back. Sometimes the content is there, but why read it if the title is garbage. Bravo, this post is legit.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
@Grizzly: I wish I could say that I always came up with great titles on my other blogs, but it’s just not true. But since seeing the light, I’ll be paying MUCH more attention to my titles. Thanks for the comment.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
@Court: Quite the compliment, and it’s very, very appreciated. Thanks for putting BZ out - I just found it today, and I’m definitely going to be submitting all the cool stuff that I find.
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