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Marking Up Images
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Eliminate Buzzwords
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Formatting Your Content
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Does each sentence get you to read the next one?
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Power & Trigger Words
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Become A Triple Threat
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Three methods to make Headlines:
Subject lines are used to get your prospects attention.
It doesn’t matter if you have great copy if they never OPEN the email or READ the first sentence. Grab them in with a catchy subject line…
….but CAUTION: Don’t use a totally random line that doesn’t relate to your story at all. If you say in an email subject line, “YOUR MOM JUST DIED”
….they will click it, but get very angry and turned off when you start saying, “Do you need new email marketing software??”
Here’s three different ways to write good subject lines (pay particular attention to the last one):
You can write however you want, but here’s some practices I personally use with success:
- The more like an editorial piece, the better (like a newspaper column)
- Keep the text width really small. 550 pixels-wide maximum.
- Use bolds or underlines if you would SPEAK something with emphasis.
- Use centering to exaggerate something.
- Use quotes from famous people that relate. Center and italicize them.
- Use bullets to show lists of interesting things.
- Max 2-3 sentences per paragraph to keep it reading fast.
- For page flips….say stuff like, “Ok, but that’s not the best part…..”
- Use P.S. and P.P.S. to summarize or make sure they take an action.
“Heard it off the street” Method
Step 1) Make a chart like this on a piece of paper:
Step 2) Under the “Something you heard” section, brainstorm some things that if you heard them passing someone on the sidewalk, you’d stop and go “Errrgghh!!??”
Examples:
- I dropped $700 like 10 feet from here….
- My dog shat out a $100 bill today….
- I couldn’t believe my daughter made $300 from her phone today….
- My brother was bald but then his hair grew back…..
Step 3) Under the “What you’re selling” section, write what you’re selling.
Example we’ll use: Selling an HTML5 programming course
Step 4) Take the best lines, and pair them together:
Step 5) Combine them together to make mini-stories (watch the video for examples).
Step 6) Use your new-found “catchy-mini-stories” as either subject lines or opener lines to get people’s attention.
Headline Formulas for you to use:
Sometimes you need a little “assistance” to get your brain juice going. These formulas will jog your brain in the right direction:
[End result they want] + [Time period] + [Address the objections]
Examples:
[How to make amazing tacos] + [In 10 minutes] + [For under 5 bucks]
[Make a landing page] + [By tonight] + [With zero experience]
[Increase walk-in traffic to your restaurant] + [This month] + [Without paying for advertising]
But formulas can be BROKEN or SHIFTED!! Let’s be bad little monkeys and change the formula to something like this:
[Take this action] + [Specific Time Period] + [End Result]
Examples:
[Consult with me] + [For 1 hour] + [And I’ll improve your eCommerce site sales]
[Talk to just 3 of your customers] + [For 5 minutes] + [To laser-target your sales pitch]
[Put this liquid in your fish tank] + [Wait 1 hour] + [And you’ll never have to clean it again]
Want to make a title that’s good for SEO?
If you’re doing a how-to kind of article, often a good ole’ descriptive title can be the simplest. These can also be the best for SEO purposes.
Allow me to demonstrate……by seeing how we can headline an article about cooking eggs:
Step 1.) Go to Google Trends.
Look for keywords that are getting more popular with time. So we’ll check the popularity of “How to cook an egg.”
You can see a nice little chart that’s increasing, so this is a pretty popular term:
Step 2.) Let’s enter some other words to compare.
Let’s just add in some other close keywords. I’ll add in “How to cook scrambled eggs”.
As you can see, our competitor word wasn’t AS popular (probably because it was more specific), but still a good up-trending term:
Step 3.) Find the hottest words:
We then added the term “How to make eggs” which is only slightly different, but look at the MASSIVE amount of searches that term gets versus the others! You can’t even see the other search volume compared to how much this one gets!
This would tell me that a great how-to article or video titled “How to make eggs” could potentially hit a huge audience based on search volume.
Try it yourself on Google Trends.
Examples of headlines grabbing attention in different ways:
Found in a magazine. There’s basically 3 main words that grab your attention. Paired with the image of a ripped dude, you INSTANTLY get the ad is about fitness and losing flab:
This is a silly example. But if you were perusing car listings on Craigslist, you’d sure as hell notice this one!! The craziness and entertainment value alone makes you want to read it:
Anatomy of a headline.
A lesson to always remember:
The whole point of your headlines is to grab someone into the article or video.
They then start sliding down a “slippery slope” as Joseph Sugarman puts it.
I even made you a handy graphic to demonstrate what going down a “Slippery Slope” should look like.
Remember this:
“8 out of 10 people will read the headline.
2 out of 10 people will read the copy.”
The job of the headline is to suck people in, but ALSO to eliminate people who are the wrong readers! Think of your headline as the bouncer of your club. You don’t want to let EVERYONE in, only the people who match your style. So you don’t want to spread your message too thin by trying to catch everyone, like this:
“How to cook eggs and scrambled them and also how to make a good yolk but also keep the egg whites intact and then how to make the egg taste good and also bread.”
Instead you want to make it to the point and relevant, like this:
“How to cook a classic breakfast egg.”
But then we can sex-up that headline to whatever your topic is. Maybe you have a nutrition blog that’s talking about how to make a healthy egg:
“How to cook a high-protein egg breakfast like Michael Phelps.”
The top 100 blog post headlines from QuickSprout.com ranked on number of Facebook shares and comments:
Headline | Shares |
How Spending $162,301.42 on Clothes Made Me $692,500 | 1953 |
22 Gmail Plugins That All Content Marketers Need to Know About | 1831 |
How a Ferrari Made Me a Million Bucks | 1491 |
How to Improve Your Facebook’s Organic Reach | 1483 |
What Are The Best Times to Post on Social Media | 1235 |
The Ultimate Content Marketing Checklist: 40 Questions to Ask Yourself before Publishing Your Next Blog Post | 974 |
37 Point Checklist: How to Create Content That Will Increase Your Traffic by Tomorrow Morning | 942 |
The Content Marketer’s Toolkit: 35 Tools You Can’t Blog Without | 781 |
The Ultimate Guide to Hashtags | 769 |
10 Ways to Improve Your Content Marketing | 684 |
7 Obsolete Social Media Tactics You’re Wasting Your Time On | 678 |
7 Marketing Tactics That Increased My Growth by 679% | 645 |
Why We Like, Comment, and Share on Facebook | 630 |
What SEO Used to Be Versus What SEO Is Now | 615 |
The 10 Key Elements of a High Quality Website | 562 |
7 Obsolete SEO Tactics You’re Wasting Your Time On | 511 |
Is It Worth Responding to Blog Comments? | 494 |
Stop Guessing: Here’s a Social Media Strategy That Works | 493 |
How to Structure a Perfect SEO Optimized Page | 465 |
The Scientifically Proven Best Time to Think and Write Creatively | 458 |
10 Marketing Predictions You Should Prepare for in 2015 | 423 |
Why You Need a Social Media Calendar and How to Create One | 421 |
How to Create The Perfect Social Media Post | 403 |
7 Tips for Increasing Your Click-Through Rates on Facebook | 401 |
How to Make Custom Images for Your Blog Posts Without Hiring a Designer | 392 |
8 Ways to Get More Social Shares Without Annoying Readers | 371 |
Why Link Building Is NOT the Future of SEO | 366 |
Who Is More Active on Social Media? Men or Women? | 361 |
The Ultimate SEO Checklist: 25 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Your Next Post | 359 |
The Day After: 11 Things to Do After You Publish a Post | 356 |
How Does Content Marketing Actually Get You More Sales? | 355 |
10 Fun Exercises That Will Help You Become a Better Entrepreneur | 354 |
7 Things Every (Great) Landing Page Needs | 354 |
11 Tactics to Get More Click-Throughs from Social Media | 348 |
7 Lies About SEO You Probably Believe | 333 |
The Complete Guide to Building Your Personal Brand | 330 |
How Google Crawls and Indexes Web Pages | 321 |
How to Double Your Writing Speed Without Lowering Its Quality | 312 |
Why You Shouldn’t Hire a Marketing Consultant | 312 |
How to Be More Productive on Social Media | 310 |
100 Lessons Learned from 10 Years of Blogging | 303 |
11 Business Philosophies to Live and Die By | 297 |
Don’t Blog Unless You Use These 11 Tools | 289 |
How to Structure a Perfect LinkedIn Profile | 286 |
Which Social Media Platforms Are Best Suited for Your Business? | 285 |
Why Do Sites Rank High on Google When They Aren’t Optimized? | 281 |
How to Avoid a Google Penalty | 281 |
How to Increase Your Instagram Engagement by 182% | 279 |
11 Essential Elements of a Perfect Blog Design (a Data Driven Answer) | 276 |
How to Write a Great Value Proposition | 276 |
How to Get Customers Without Spending Any Money | 273 |
How to Get Your First 1000 Facebook Fans | 270 |
How to Increase Your Website’s Traffic Without Any Marketing | 268 |
The Anatomy of a High Converting Landing Page | 267 |
The Science of Instagram: How to Get More Followers and Likes | 253 |
13 Important Questions You Need to Ask Yourself Before Blogging | 244 |
The Anatomy of a Perfect Facebook Post | 241 |
Should You Repost Your Blog Content on Other Websites? A Data-Driven Answer | 237 |
How to Write Emails Your Subscribers Can’t Wait to Open | 235 |
7 Proactive Ways to Get Backlinks That’ll Actually Boost Your Traffic | 232 |
The Ultimate Guide to Creating Visually Appealing Content | 231 |
A/B Testing For Beginners: 70 Resources to Get You Started | 230 |
How to Turn Pinterest into a Revenue Generating Channel | 230 |
How Content Length Affects Rankings and Conversions | 230 |
How to Get Your First 1,000 Blog Readers | 229 |
How to Improve Your Marketing with Google Analytics Data | 228 |
7 Conversion Lessons Learned From Eye Tracking | 227 |
How to Get 247% More People to Read Your Content | 226 |
7 Popular Content Marketing Myths You Need to Stop Following | 222 |
How Blogging Affects Your Bottom Line | 222 |
7 Lies About Social Media Marketing You Probably Believe | 221 |
8 Ways to Improve the Usability of Your Website | 221 |
Running out of Topics to Blog about? Follow These 5 Simple Steps | 215 |
What Spending $57,000 on Instagram Taught Me | 213 |
How to Grow Your Blog Traffic by 20,000 Visitors a Month | 212 |
How Many Links Should You Build to Your Website? | 210 |
How to Create Content That Drives Lots of Organic Traffic | 210 |
15 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting My First Company | 209 |
7 Simple Copywriting Tweaks That’ll Shoot Your Conversion Rate Up | 206 |
The 5 Stages of Blog Growth: How Your Traffic Tactics Should Change as You Grow | 206 |
Can You Grow Your Organic Traffic Without Generating Content? | 206 |
The Blueprint of an Optimal Blog Design | 206 |
How to Receive Great Testimonials | 206 |
How Much Copy Should You Write on Your Homepage? | 204 |
How to Generate $1,000,000 from Your Blog | 203 |
The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking | 202 |
Does URL Structure Even Matter? A Data Driven Answer | 201 |
How to Build a Loyal Audience on the Web | 200 |
7 Strategies That’ll Actually Drive You More Social Media Traffic | 200 |
How to Engage and Persuade People Through Storytelling | 200 |
How to Keep Your Readers on Your Blog Longer | 199 |
Why Transparency Is The New Marketing | 198 |
What I Learned About Content Marketing by Analyzing 614 Posts | 196 |
Why All Marketers Should Be Thinking Mobile | 196 |
How I Reached 100,000 Visitors with These 7 Rules | 195 |
How to Build Brand Awareness for Your Business | 194 |
How to Build a Million Dollar Business From Your Personal Brand | 193 |
7 Lessons and 3 New Strategies I Learned From Launching My 5th Blog | 192 |
10 Most Costly Marketing Blunders I’ve Ever Made | 191 |
7 Landing Page Flaws That Kill Your Conversions (and How to Fix Them) | 190 |
Top 100 blog post headlines from OkDork.com ranked by adding all shared values:
Headline | Total |
Why I got Fired from Facebook (a $100 Million dollar lesson) | 11612 |
Why Content Goes Viral: What Analyzing 100 Million Articles Taught Us. | 8098 |
Are things happening to you or are you making things happen? | 4249 |
We Analyzed Nearly 1 Million Headlines. Here’s What We Learned | 3777 |
How to attract the best talent in the world | 2989 |
We Analyzed the 3,000 Most Successful LinkedIn Publishing Posts | 2791 |
A (Proven) Freelancer’s Guide to Growing Your Business | 2565 |
How to Create Great Content That Drives Traffic | 2072 |
The 6 Step Guide to Getting Free Press for Your Startup | 1342 |
How to get your first 100 email subscribers | 837 |
SEO for Beginners – Everything You Need to Know | 704 |
The 18 Books that Changed my Life | 600 |
A Guide to Grow Your Blog (or Any Blog) 10X | 546 |
6 Steps to Writing Great Cold Emails | 534 |
What I learned spending $2 Million on Facebook Ads | 485 |
How to get an eBook to #1 on Amazon | 479 |
The Secret to Effective Marketing – Quant Based Marketing | 446 |
How Not to Feel Guilty about Charging For Your Time | 429 |
What You Can Learn from KISSmetrics’ SEO Strategy | 411 |
Create Your First Marketing Plan | 397 |
What’s Your Normal Email Open Rate? | 384 |
How to Hit #1 on Amazon’s Bestseller List | 365 |
Funny Out of Office Messages: Top 13 Ideas for Your Out of Office Replies | 344 |
The Formula for Creating a 1,000,000 Download Podcast | 310 |
Why I Quit Mint.com (and lost out on $1.7 million) | 304 |
How to Make Better Decisions with a Priority Framework | 289 |
How to Earn More Money: By Asking | 283 |
36 ways to Deal with Depression | 264 |
The Samuel L. Jackson Marketing Hack | 234 |
Mint Sales and Marketing: How Mint Beat Wesabe | 216 |
How to Hire a Great Marketing Person | 214 |
What Babysitting Taught Me About Business | 198 |
How to Grow a Blog to 100,000 Visitors in Less than a Year | 197 |
Make it Easy to Say Yes | 185 |
What OkDork’s Marketing Funnel Can Teach You | 178 |
How to Create Your First Profitable YouTube Campaign | 177 |
What I learned about email marketing after losing $135,000 a day | 169 |
How to Look Busy: Top 10 Ways to Look Busy at Work | 167 |
What It’s Like to Hang with Millionaires | 165 |
How to Create a Happiness Advantage | 164 |
How to Simplify Your Decision Making | 164 |
How to Improve Customer Satisfaction (or how to make your customers orgasm) | 164 |
the expert curse | 163 |
How to Connect with VIPs: 5 Tips for Cold Emails | 160 |
Showing vs. Telling: How to Convince Anyone | 154 |
How to Get More Email Subscribers | 151 |
How to Organize a Conference: How We Made Over $100,000 | 142 |
Think and Grow Rich: Quotes & Book Review | 136 |
The Difference: Successful People and Losers | 133 |
How to Make a Great Day | 132 |
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Book Review | 129 |
My 2014 Processes (No More Resolutions) | 129 |
Startup Tips: How I grew a waiting list of 20,000+ at Mint.com Part I | 114 |
How I Made $50,000 in College (and What You Can Learn Too) | 108 |
How One Survey Created Insane Results | 107 |
Startup Advertising Spend Calculator | 107 |
Permission Based Email Marketing: 6 Tips for Reducing Unsubscriptions | 95 |
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products – Book Review | 81 |
How to Write a Convincing Craigslist Ad (or You get out what you put in) | 79 |
If it’s uncomfortable, you’re growing. | 77 |
How to Spend Your First $100 on Retargeting Ads | 76 |
The Power of Habit Book Review | 75 |
Learning from a Shitty Experience | 73 |
The WordPress Plugin that DOUBLED My Conversions | 71 |
How to Be a Professional | 71 |
Unlabel by Mark Ecko – Book Review | 68 |
What Waffles Can Teach Us About Business | 67 |
Improving Conversion Rates: How We Doubled AppSumo’s Conversion Rate in 2 Days | 66 |
Smartcuts – Book Review | 65 |
What I learned not eating for 60 hours | 64 |
Make an Impact | 62 |
Daily Accountability Marketing Metrics | 61 |
Sales 101 for Startups – 3 Rules to Success | 61 |
Kick ass using Positive Triggers | 58 |
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz | 56 |
Things I Learned in Cuba | 56 |
If You Don’t Like Your Life, Change It! – Book Review | 54 |
THE BIG FEARS ENTREPRENEURS FACE—AND HOW TO GET PAST THEM | 51 |
My 2013 Goals | 51 |
The Demise of Craigslist | 51 |
Free, 12 Week Marketing Course – Summer of Marketing | 50 |
Walk a mile in my shoes (literally) | 47 |
30 Days of YouTube Videos | 45 |
How to Build Customer Relationships | 40 |
Social Media & Business: Don’t believe the hype | 39 |
Connecting with Others: What Have You Done for Me Lately? | 38 |
The End of Overeating — Book Review | 35 |
Original Mint.com Landing Pages | 34 |
15 Ways to Optimize your Subscription Model | 33 |
Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It – Book Review | 32 |
How to Guarantee Success like the show House of Cards | 31 |
My Travel Hacks & Free Luggage for Your Next Adventure (Part 2) | 30 |
7 steps to a legit Mexican Restaurant | 30 |
“GEBY”: The 4 Ways To Engineer A Great Morning | 29 |
Small Giants by Bo Burlingham — Book Review | 28 |
Noah’s Ultimate Speech at UC Berkeley | 28 |
How to Give More: Give and Take — Book Review | 27 |
How to Choose a Lawyer: Questions for Startups to Ask | 25 |
10 Best Ways to Quit Your Job | 25 |
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene – Book Review | 24 |
Top 30 blog post headlines from Backlinko.com ranked by adding all shared values:
Headline | Total |
Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List | 10233 |
Viral Marketing Case Study: How a Brand New Blog Generated 17,584 Visitors In One Day | 4447 |
Conversion Rate Optimization Techniques: The Complete List | 4155 |
16 Actionable SEO Copywriting Secrets That Will Drive More Traffic To Your Site | 3690 |
17 Insanely Actionable List Building Strategies That Will Generate More Subscribers Today | 3627 |
21 Actionable SEO Techniques You Can Use Right Now | 3034 |
17 Untapped Backlink Sources (Updated) | 2,633 |
How We Rank #1 in Google And Grew Organic Traffic by 963% (Two Step-By-Step Case Studies) | 2254 |
On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page | 2128 |
Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days | 1341 |
Want More Traffic That Actually Converts? Follow These 4 Steps… | 1243 |
How to Get High Quality Backlinks (Without Guest Posting) | 1232 |
Content Strategy Case Study: 36,282 Readers + 1,000 Email Subscribers | 1206 |
How to Create a Squeeze Page That Converts at 21.7% (Case Study) | 1149 |
Ecommerce SEO Case Study: White Hat Link Building Without Any Content | 1052 |
How To Increase Conversions by 785% in One Day (Without A/B Testing) | 942 |
YouTube SEO: The Ultimate Guide | 930 |
White Hat SEO Case Study: 348% More Organic Traffic in 7 Days | 830 |
The Definitive Guide to Keyword Research | 726 |
How To Boost Conversions by 529% in 45-Minutes (Two Step-By-Step Case Studies) | 648 |
How to Get Backlinks With Guestographics | 489 |
I’m KILLING It With This Completely New Kind of Backlink | 470 |
Why Google Hates Your Site (Hint: It Has Something to Do With TrustRank) | 412 |
CPA Marketing: The Ultimate Guide | 381 |
The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging | 292 |
The Definitive Guide to Link Building | 151 |
5 Lessons Learned From 1 Million Search Engine Visitors | 102 |
7 Ways to Protect Your Site Against Google Penalties | 91 |
5 Dumb SEO Mistakes That Smart People Make | 23 |