A headline will make or break your story in an instant. As British advertising tycoon David Ogilvy once said, it’s worth 90% of your advertising dollar.
Journalists and publishers have known this for centuries. For all the talk about clickbait today, people have been crafting headlines that deliberately play on people’s emotions and curiosity for as long as any of us can remember.
And here’s the thing – as long as you’re not misleading or underdelivering, it’s okay to be smart about your use of language to capture as many eyeballs as possible.
Headlines can be the most difficult part of writing a story, because they require you to say a lot with a little. You need to strike that balance between short enough that someone will read it and understand it in an instant (eg scrolling through their Twitter feed), but informative enough to tell the reader what the story will be about, and why they need to read it immediately.
If research institutions want to compete with popular science websites for audiences, they must treat their headlines with the same level of expertise and attention.
Here are some of the most effective techniques for crafting headlines to give your scientific discoveries the best chance of engaging the public.
What makes a viral headline?
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Emotional
By far the most important thing your headline can do is to make people feel something, whether it’s excitement, awe, fear, disgust – anything. Stir an emotion, and a reader will be far more likely to click through and read your story.
Consider how these top-performing headlines use emotional and engaging language to make you want to click through:
- Bizarre space circle captured in unprecedented detail – awe (Nature)
- Omicron boosters could arm you against variants that don’t yet exist – hope (Nature)
- Jupiter has 10 more moons we didn’t know about — and they’re weird – curious (Nature)
- Google’s New AI Has Learned to Become “Highly Aggressive” in Stressful Situations – anxious (ScienceAlert)
- That Thing the Standing Rock Protesters Were Afraid of Just Happened –anger/frustration (ScienceAlert)
- Gravity can transform into light, mind-bending physics paper suggests – curious (Live Science)
If your headline isn’t going to make people feel something, it should benefit them in other ways. Create content that will have an impact on their lives.
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Life-changing
While we don’t recommend trying to convince your audience that a single article will in fact change their life, an article that promises to have a lasting impact is a clever way to engage audiences.
This includes content that can give readers new knowledge, new perspectives, new skills, tips, tricks and tools.
It also helps if you can imply that all of this learning will be easy – top 10 lists, charts, infographics and videos all imply an easier and faster knowledge-gaining experience than reading a straight article.
Consider these top-performing headlines:
- A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics – new knowledge (Quanta Magazine)
- Physicists make most precise measurement ever of neutron’s lifetime – new knowledge (Nature)
- 3 Simple Steps to Mastering Any New Subject, From a Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist – new skills/tips & tricks (ScienceAlert)
- Researchers Say They’ve Figured Out What Makes People Reject Science, And It’s Not Ignorance – new perspective (ScienceAlert)
- NASA Just Made All Its Research Free Online – new tools (Popular Mechanics)
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Not just news
News stories are just a fraction of the type of content people engage with online. In addition to basic news stories, we’re seeing top 10 lists, infographics, charts, videos, image galleries, fun facts, and interactive microsites – all formats that don’t ask the audience to concentrate too hard in order to have an informative experience.
If you’re offering this kind of content, make it clear in the headline.
- Your brain expands and shrinks over time — these charts show how (Nature)
- This mesmerizing 3D map visualizes millions of scientific studies (Fast Company)
- From climate change ‘certainty’ to rapid decline: a timeline of IPCC reports (The Guardian)
- 3 ways to find a job that aligns with your values (Fast Company)
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A trending topic
If you’re smart about your content, you’ll be using various sources of analytics to learn what your audience does and doesn’t respond to. You’ll keep playing the hits until they go sour, and then find something fresh and new to try.
In science, there are some areas that resonate with the public more than others. It might surprise you to know that stories about complex ‘hard’ sciences such as particle physics and chemistry are a consistently good bet, whereas cute animal or quirky psychology stories can often be hit-or-miss.
Learn which topics work for your audience and be sure to include them in your headline:
- Hello quantum world! Google publishes landmark quantum supremacy claim (Nature)
- This Genius Map Explains How Everything in Physics Fits Together (ScienceAlert)
- The Electron Is So Round That It’s Ruling Out Potential New Particles (Quanta Magazine)
- Newly discovered ‘einstein’ tile is a 13-sided shape that solves a decades-old math problem (Live Science)
- Famous ‘homunculus’ brain map redrawn to include complex movements (Nature)
Give the people what they want
A major part of our mission at STEM Matters is to help universities and research institutes see the value in communicating to the public on their terms.
Whereas marketing and PR prioritise an organisation’s interests and agenda, communications should consider the needs and interests of their target audiences and put them first. This is the key to effective engagement.
With that said, we encourage communications staff to seek out best-practice principles for writing headlines that tap into what their audiences are interested in.
For example, Buzzsumo, have done their research on what makes a viral headline, providing visuals that help you put our tips above into practice:
That BuzzFeed headline received more than 650,000 shares and 2.6 million views. There’s something to be learned from that.
With all that said, here are our Top 10 tips for writing a successful headline:
- Tap into your readers’ emotions – make them feel something. Use emotional, superlative language, such as incredible, amazing, spooky, freaked out, surprising.
- Offer practical tips, tricks, and tools.
- Tease a new perspective, new knowledge, or a debunking of old norms.
- Mix it up – tell readers when you’re giving them something different, such as an infographic, video, or image gallery.
- Lean into trending topics to give your readers what they’re interested in now.
- Learn what your audience engages with over time through the use of analytics and apply that to your headlines.
- You don’t have to be Buzzfeed, but don’t be afraid to learn from those who have mastered the art of viral headlines.
- Consider the needs and interests of your audience and prioritise these – don’t put the name of your organisation in the headline.
- Step back and ask yourself, would my friends and family click on this? Would I?
- Remember: every. word. counts. Headlines should be sharp and punchy, but they need to give enough information to intrigue the reader and make them click. Strike that balance and think about every word carefully.
Article by Staff Writer
This article was originally published in August 2020 – updated May 2023
Featured photo credit: Malerapaso | iStock
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