I’ve noticed something interesting during my perusal of social media and in conversations with people over time.And please feel free to tell me if I’m alone in this experience…But I’ve seen a lot of people sharing or quoting articles apparently entirely based on their headlines.It seems, in many cases, that people read a headline, deduct what the article says, then base an opinion solely on that. And in many cases, those opinions lack important context from the article because… well, they didn’t actually read it.That means people can theoretically decide whether an article’s worth sharing or discussing without even having read it.My point here isn’t to share my personal feelings about people doing this (it drives me nuts), but rather to extrapolate a professional observation from it:Headlines are so, so powerful. They literally dictate the value that people assign to your content before they’ve even read a single line.As the late, great David Ogilvy said…“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”So, invest the time to make yours attention-grabbing by…

• Creating curiosity by asking questions, offering contrarian opinions, creating a sense of urgency, planting a seed of doubt, or using numbers and lists
• Make a promise of value to your reader as far as what they’ll take away from your content
• Being specific, removing filler words, and avoiding jargon

And don’t just stop at one headline. Write 10 options and pick the best one.Leverage the power of great headlines and watch how it improve the performance of your content.