1 critical reason to put numbers in blog-post headlines

What does it profit a man to blog if no one reads what he has written?

No it’s not the New Testament or Shakespeare. It the cry that comes from every heart of every blogger who ponders the eternal question: Is anybody actually reading what I write?

I cannot answer that question for you. What I can do is give you a technique or two that will maximize the chances that the answer to your agonizing question is hell yes!

For starters, focus on the seductive quality of your blog-post headline. It’s the single most important sentence you write. Since the dawn of newspapering, headlines have been written to convince readers to dive into the story with zeal. Now we blog and internet analytics tell us that eight out of 10 people read the headlines on blog posts. Yet, only two of 10 read the article.

The lesson? Our headlines are not seductive enough. Eighty percent of the time we fail to provide the required allure to get people reading. That’s sad, though not surprising when you consider how many people are blogging and how much there is to read both online and offline.

Here are two pieces of advice that can tilt those percentages in your favor.

One, keep headlines simple and direct. Short declarative sentences make for easily read and understood headlines. Obscure or otherwise complicated headlines are too much work. Readers will veer away and find the path of lesser resistance.

Two, put numbers in your headlines. Those tenacious web analytics tell us that blog posts with headlines that contain numbers bring three times to eight times more traffic than headlines without numbers. That’s a ton.

Examples include my blog post 10 guidelines for making your website credible , which generated more traffic than any blog post I’ve ever written. Or 15 corporate blogs worthy of imitation.

Why numbers work well in headlines isn’t really very mysterious. At least not to me. Here’s my theory. Anytime we see a headline like 3 steps toward conscious workplace conversations we know the article will be easy to skim. We can speed-read it by going right to the numbers or bulletpoints and gleaning the gist of what the author has to share. If a point is interesting, we can dive into the full graph. If not, we move on to the next point.

In the end, though, we find we’re able to blast through the blog post very quickly while still absorbing its major points.

So that’s my advice bloggers. It’s guidance you – and your readers – can count on.

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