I’m practicing writing better blog headlines. How did I do on this one? Did I draw you in? Or did you just accidentally stumbleupon it somewhere?!
Well, I was doing some research recently and found this great how-to guide on headlines. I never really knew there could possibly be a science to all this but, well, I was just being naive. There is a science to almost everything I suppose.
Check out CoSchedule’s “Emotional Headlines Get Shared More on Social Media [Conclusive Proof]“. They analyzed their database of headlines and found that the emotional value of a headline has a direct correlation to the number of shares. The higher the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV), the more shares.
How do they measure it?
The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer is a tool based on the research that is made freely available by the Advanced Marketing Institute. Using it can easily provide you with such a score. (I think this is cool.)
I entered this blog’s headline “You’ll Love this Blog because it will Make your Job Easier!” and it got 36.36%; below the score was this narrative:
This score indicates that your headline has a total of 36.36% Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) Words. To put that in perspective, the English language contains approximately 20% EMV words.
And for comparison, most professional copywriters’ headlines will have 30%-40% EMV Words in their headlines, while the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words in headlines.
So I guess that’s pretty good… for a professional who is only part-time gifted!
I’ll keep practicing! The analysis goes on to tell me:
“While the overall EMV score for your headline is 36.36%, your headline also has the following predominant emotion classification:
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Intellectual
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| Your headline carries words that predominantly appeal to most people’s intellectual sphere. Intellectual impact words are especially effective when your goal is to arouse curiosity, and when offering products and services that require reasoning or careful evaluation. The majority of words with emotional impact in the English language fall in this Intellectual category. Intellectual impact words are the most-used of all three categories, and have the broadest appeal to people in general.Intellectual impact words are best used to attune copy and sales messages aimed at people and businesses involved in the fields of education, law, medicine, research, politics, and similar fields. While not restricted to these groups, by giving presentations which are weighted with Intellectual impact words, your clients and customers will be more positively influenced and you are more likely to attain a more favorable response. |
You can see, again on the CoSchedule full article that there are three main emotions:
Coschedule.com
I’d say I achieved my goal — I’d like you to consider my services and give some intellectual thought to my offerings.
CoSchedule goes on to tell us that uplifting and happy headlines are the way to go. Giving UpWorthy and Buzzfeed as example blogs that are “known for using overly-sensational (emotional) headlines to gain a huge number of shares and virility. Sites like this are constantly appealing to our intellectual, empathetic, and spiritual senses, emotionally persuading us to click and share.”
Check out this article from CoSchedule and happy headlining!