Huh?/Oh! Titles Revisited

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Browsing the shelves of the nearest Barnes & Noble, I was reminded once more of how fond book authors are of using titles that first grab attention, then have explanatory subtitles. Knowing the importance of titles in creating online posts and articles, I long ago dubbed these “Huh? Oh!” titles.

The “Huh?”s are there to startle and capture attention, while the “Oh!’”s are there to explain what the text is actually going to be about. Importantly, in online marketing, those “Ohs!” are there to match the content of the post or article with the terms users typed into the search bar.

My exploration of the shelves in the Health section yielded some “straight” titles, such as:

  • The New Menopause
  • Herb Care
  • Healing Back Pain

Several others were examples of the “Huh? Oh!” tactic. (Had these books been on a general display, my interest might have been engaged, but, without the explanatory subtitle,  I would never have guessed they had to do with health:

  • 5 Trips: An Investigative Journey into Mental Health
  • The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness
  • Radical: The Science, Culture, and History of Breast Cancer in America

There are a couple of things you can do to make sure your blog posts have good titles, medium.com suggests:

  • Use keywords in your titles, making it more likely that your posts will show up in search results.
  • Keep your titles short and sweet. People are more likely to click on a title that’s short and to the point. Aim for titles that are no more than 70 characters long.

Following my exploration of those “Health shelves”, I purchased the latest issue of Writer’s Digest, curious as to whether I’d find many Huh?/Oh’s there. I did:

  • Confounding Expectations: Start With the Villain for More Engaging Storytelling
  • Finding Light in the Darkness: How Comic Gary Gulman Effectively Blends Humor into His Story of Overcoming Major Depression
  • The Unexpected Sells: Why Agents Want Genre-Defying StoriesAt Say It For You, we know that, for either straightforward or “Huh?-Oh!” titles of posts and articles,, one way to engage readers is using the sound of the words themselves, repeating vowel sounds (assonance) or consonant sounds (alliteration), so that searchers use their sense of hearing along with the visual.

    Never forget, though – whether you choose to use “Huh?/Oh!s to engage reader curiosity, the most important goal is delivering, in the body of your post, on the promise in your headline.

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Don’t Let the Marketing Dose Make the Poison

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Earlier this week our Say It For You blog highlighted nuggets of marketing wisdom contained in well-known proverbs. A classic maxim in the field of toxicology is “The dose makes the poison.”, meaning that often, a substance is toxic to the body only if it is administered  in too high a dosage…

“If urgency becomes the sole focus of marketing efforts, it can overshadow the brand’s core values and identity,” shopcreatify.com points out. “While scarcity can be a motivator, the primary focus should be on the benefits and features that truly resonate with your target audience.”

What’s more, Timothy Hodges of HonorAging, says, “Marketing too much can send mixed messages to existing and potential clients. For potential clients, you can be perceived as desperate, struggling, and/or not sending a clear enough message regarding your product or services”.

Interesting…At Say It For You, I use the word “marketing” in a very specialized sense.  That’s because, in today’s world, whatever your business or profession, there’s almost no end to the information available to consumers on the Internet.  Our job then, as content writers, isn’t really to “sell” anything, but rather to help readers absorb, and put to use, all that information.

Marketing, I believe, is about differentiating what you think about what you do and why you think the way you do. Taking a stance on issues relevant to your business or profession puts you in the role of subject matter expert and opinion leader.

I remember reading a piece by Sophia Bernazzani Barron of Hubspot in which she discussed “after-the-fact” selling, accomplished by describing an “extra” benefit added to things online prospects have already demonstrated is important to them. Blog marketing is, in fact, a tool for that “extra benefit” type of selling; because blogs are relational and conversational, they can be persuasive in a low-key manner.

Content marketing, remember, is a positive – it’s only when offered in too high a dose, that the marketing has the potential to “poison” the selling process.

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The 3-Step Approach to Helping Readers Solve a Problem

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“Precedents thinking”, involves innovating by combining old ideas, Stefanos Zenios and Ken Favaro write in the Harvard Business Review. In teaching Stanford University’s popular course on entrepreneurship, they suggest a three-step approach to problem-solving and innovation:

  1. Frame – through a series of interviews, define what challenges need to be tackled.
  2. Search – develop a deeper understanding of those challenges.
  3. Combine – Take pieces of past innovations and solutions, even those used in different industries, that may be pertinent to the elements of this challenge (a sort of old-wine-in-new-bottles approach).

This discussion brought to mind a 2017 fourdots.com blog post that made a case for textual content as a primary driver of online communication as compared with video:

  • Text gives you the option to stop exactly where you want to, wrapping your mind around a certain piece of information.
  • Text can be easily updated and upgraded.
  • B2B buyers consume informational pieces and case studies, looking for industry thought leadership.
  • Text stimulates the mind and is more focused.

In the process of creating content that helps readers solve problems, we use text to frame the challenge, demonstrating that our business owner or professional practitioner client has, indeed, developed a deep understanding of the challenges faced by the reader. In fact, it is only once these two steps have been accomplished that readers will be ready to appreciate – and hopefully implement – the course of action recommended by the “Subject matter Expert”.

“Great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problems; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems,” is the concept behind Seth Godin’s marketing philosophy. That is why, he tells us content writers, never start with the solution, but with the problem you seek to solve.

Use the 3-step approach in helping readers solve a problem!

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Don’t Kill With Your Critique

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Kill with your critique, but do it in a good way, Ryan G. Van Cleave advises in Writer’s Yearbook 2025. As an editor, van Cleave is regularly invited to conferences to give manuscript critiques.  He knew his comments were difference-making, but “best of all, no one cried”.

You can offer serious, honest feedback without it being crushing, Angela Ackerman notes, by following these guidelines:

  • being constructive, not destructive
  • praising the good along with pointing out the bad
  • focusing on the writing, not the writer

In comparative advertising, value is conveyed not only from quality, but from the disparity in quality between one product or service and another. The other company or provider serves as an anchor, or reference point to demonstrate the superiority of your product or service. Still, at Say It For You, we advise not “killing with critiques”. Yes, in writing for business, we want to clarify the ways we stand out from the competition, but staying positive is still paramount.

What about the other extreme, offering positive comments about a competitor? While it might appear that praising or even recognizing the accomplishments of a competitor is the last thing any business owner or professional practitioner would want to do, prospective buyers need to know you’re aware they have other options, and that you can be trusted to have their best interests in mind.

 

The challenge posed to us as content writers relates less to critiques of our competitors, but in making clear just what our clients make, sell, and do that sets them apart from their competitors. Even more importantly, we must make clear why any of those differences would even matter to their prospects. In a sense, the purpose of content marketing is to provide a forum for business owners and practitioners to answer those very “what”, “how”, and “why” questions!

 

An essential point I often stress to clients is that the content must represent their opinion or slant on the information we will be  helping them serve up to their readers,  expressing the core values on which  their business or practice was founded.  That way, they protect themselves from being “killed with critique”, establishing themselves as thought leaders and subject matter experts.

 

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Proving Readers Right

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A “History Facts” piece I came across yesterday made me aware that the word “Pennsylvania” is written with a missing “n” on the Liberty Bell!  Prepared for yet another “gotcha!” – type article, I was pleasantly surprised when the authors explained that the “mis-spelling” was not a typo at all. In fact,  back in the 18th century, “Pensylvania” was a legitimate spelling of the colony’s name.

At Say It For You, we’ve often touted myth-busting as a tactic content writers can use to grab online visitors’ attention. At the same time, we caution, it would be a tactical mistake to prove readers wrong. As writers, we want to showcase our business owner and professional practitioner clients’ expertise without “showing up” their readers’ lack of it!

The golden rule in content marketing, corporate travel advisor  Qahir Chipepo agrees, is to create fans first, then introduce your solution. Educate, entertain, and inspire is what you want to do, he says. 

So true… Business blogs are wonderful tools around facts, and that’s why we writers can use content as a way to not only dispense information, but to address misinformation. At the same time, when we aggressively refute existing opinions or beliefs – or “dis” the competition, we risk alienating our clients’ audiences, turning our content into a “turn-off”. 

Every industry, every profession has its myths, ideas that sound true but simply aren’t.  Content marketing is actually the perfect vehicle for defusing false news, correcting misunderstandings, and protecting readers from word traps. Presenting the actual facts and statistics in your content is meant to have the same effect as the windshield defogger on your car. Once the mist is cleared off the glass, you reason, readers will see for themselves what’s out there – they won’t need to be either told or sold!

Realistically, though, our clients’ competitors represent viable alternatives for their prospects and customers, and readers will resist being “made wrong” for having checked out what the competition has to offer. That means that, rather than starting with what “they” are “doing wrong”, the content  should emphasize the way “WE” believe it’s best to deliver value.

Prove readers right, knowing that, armed with the facts, they will make the right decision every time!

 

 

 

 

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