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To Make Blog Titles Pop, Add a Little Assonance and Alliteration

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This month’s issue of Breathe Magazine was the inspiration for both this week’s Say It For You blog posts….

Titles – they either do the trick or they don’t, I always muse while browsing through the magazine racks at Barnes & Noble or the corner CVS. The current issue of Breathe had an especially appealing array of clever titles, I thought.

To be sure, a number of the Breathe titles were very direct, leaving not an iota of doubt as to what kind of information one should expect to see in the article:

  • Unlocking Your Potential
  • Stand Up For What’s Important
  • Ways to Cope With Change
  • Project Declutter
  • The Joy of Dogs
  • The A to Zzzzzz of Power Naps
  • Say It Loud, Say It Clear

Still other titles evoked curiosity about what stance the authors were going to take or what they were going to advise:

  • When Life Tips Out of Balance
  • Food for the Soul
  • Only Fools Rush In
  • Daydream Believer

I noticed a third grouping of titles, where the authors took advantage of the sound of the words themselves. Although I was looking at a printed page, I found, I was almost reading those titles aloud in my own head:

  • Facebook Fallout?
  • From Chore to Choice
  • Navigating Non-Negotiables
  • Experience vs. Expectation
  • Is the Grass Greener?

Notice the way similar consonants or similar vowel sounds are presented in a sequence. In scanning those titles, your eyes are both seeing the repetition and, in a real sense “hearing it” as well.

Breathe Magazine reminded me of something I’ve been teaching for years now at Say It For You, namely using alliteration (consonant repetition) and assonance (vowel repetition) in blog titles with an eye to making them more “catchy”. It’s one thing to write great content, and quite another to get readers to click on it.

To make blog titles “pop”, try add ind a pinch of alliteration and assonance!

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Blog Title Questions That Make Them Go “Hmmm…”

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Browsing through the latest issue of Breathe Magazine, I couldn’t help noticing that titles that were in the form of questions were more likely to have me stop turning the pages and start reading the article. I realized that what was giving me pause is wondering of that question applied directly to my own situation.

“Addicted to Work?    Hmmm…am I?
“Are You an Empath?”     Hmmm…am I?
“Are You Playing the Victim?”      Hmmm…is that what I’ve been doing??

The tactic of using questions in titles is one I’ve often suggested to blog content writers. After all, people are online searching for answers to questions they have and solutions for dilemmas they’re facing, and often we can help searchers formulate their questions by presenting one in the blog post title itself. Sometimes the question in the title serves to arouse readers’ curiosity about which side of the issue your opinion is going to represent.

Those Breathe Magazine questions, though, seemed to be taking things to a whole new level, I thought. Sure, in a publication about mental health, readers expect the content to be more “touchy-feely”. But couldn’t that technique of using title questions to make readers stop and examine their own business practices and purchase decisions work for all business owners and professional practitioners, I wondered? Hmmm…

“The purpose of a blog post headline is to convince readers to click on the link, or to scroll down and continue reading the post. A good title grabs attention and compels your target audience to check out what you have to say,” Team Kapost of uplandsoftware.com writes, and “questions create intrigue, serving as an invitation to participate in a conversation”..

Open-ended questions help you create better content, advises Neil Patel. But, before you can successfully convert blog readers into customers, he adds, you have to know what they’re worried about. (Then, as you become aware of their problems, you can have the case studies you need to provide a better experience, Patel explains.)

The specific genius in open-ended questions that make readers go “Hmm” may lie in the fact that one thing people tend to be worried about is – themselves! The blog topic might be plumbing, or hairstyles, or sports equipment, but title questions that force readers to stop and question their own ways, feeling compelled to read what you have to reveal about them – well, those titles can be show-stoppers!.

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Effective Blog Post Titles Force Readers to Figure it Out

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As a blog content writer, I’m always fascinated by what makes certain word combinations used in advertising pack such tremendous marketing power, while others come across as mere “slogans”. Years ago, a presentation by humorist Dick Wolfsie provided a clue. In order for a joke to be funny, he said, the person listening to or reading the joke has to be forced to figure things out. The laughter, he explained, is the reward that listeners or readers give themselves for having understood the meaning of the punch line.

I was thinking about that concept the other day, realizing why some TV ads just seem to “fall flat”, while others stick in my mind for days. Xfinity’s “Simple. Easy. Awesome.”, for example, doesn’t tell me a thing about the company’s products or services, or even relate to their funny video. The title fails to make me think, giving me nothing to figure out. In contrast, USAA’s title “What you’re made of, we’re made for” compelled me to try and figure out the meaning of the message.

“Whenever you think of the brands you know or perhaps love, there are chances that you not only recall the brand name, but campaign slogans, too.” Anne Carton writes in designhill.com, “Slogans are the taglines or phrases that are used by a company to express the importance or the core idea of their products or services,” Carton continues. Effective slogans have the positive “X” factor that makes us look twice or even thrice, she adds.

As I often stress at Say It For You, blogs are not advertisements, and therefore blog titles are not slogans. Still, there are two basic reasons titles matter – a lot – in blogs:

  1. For search – key words and phrases, especially when used in blog post titles, help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or professional practice has to offer.
  2. For reader engagement – after you’ve been “found”, you’ve still gotta “get read”.

The Dick Wolfsie insight comes into play here: Effective blog post titles not only relate to a reader’s search, but force the reader to figure out if and how!

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Pique-Your-Interest Blog Post Titles

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Browsing through the August issue of Indianapolis Monthly, I noticed something interesting about the titles of many of the articles. It was literally impossible to tell from each title what the topic of the forthcoming article would be, yet my curiosity was aroused to the point that I wanted to find out.
Applied Knowledge, for example, offered advice about filling out effective college applications. Upon Further Review turned out to be about IU football and baseball team strategy. Belly Aching headed a humorous piece on physical illnesses, real and imagined, while Fully Loaded was about luxury boutique hotels. High and Mighty was the title of a piece on penthouse-style luxury furnishings, and Out-of-the-Gate, of all things, was about how Mayor Hudnut brought the Colts team to Indianapolis.

So, should blog post titles be designed to pique readers’ interest with the same sense of “mystery”? That’s a maybe. In blog marketing, the title itself constitutes a set of implied promises: If you click on this title, it will lead you to information about the topic you punched into the search bar, to an explanation of how to obtain something desirable or to avoid or reduce an undesirable effect. The title and the content, therefore, need to be congruent.

On the other hand, there are two, not just one, reasons titles matter so much in blogs, I teach at Say It For You. The key words and phrases in the title help search engines make the match between online searchers’ needs and what your business or practice has to offer. That’s not enough, though, because, after you’ve been “found”, you still have to “get read”, which means readers need to be engaged and their interest piqued.

The compromise solution might be titles that are two-tiered, combining curiosity-arousing Indianapolis Monthly-style titles with subtitles that make clear exactly what the blog post is about. Might that come across as a “bait-and switch” (an absolute no-no in content marketing)? No, I think it’s more like a bait-and-focus blog title technique.

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