Looking to get more social engagement for your startup? – Here’s a guide/hack to writing catchy headlines for FB and Twitter

Creating great content is the first step towards spreading your word. The second, and equally important is getting your content noticed. With the realtime nature of twitter feeds and facebook newsstreams, it is very easy for your content to disappear and not be noticed by your audience. Writing a catchy headline, thus becomes a very important and integral part of your content marketing strategy. Research done by several tools and companies reveals that there are certain patterns that are observed in certain types of headlines which makes them more appealing and “clickable” than others. Titles which use certain keywords or patterns are amongst the top 20%. Here is a detailed guide to help you with creating some catchy headlines for facebook and twitter.

The ultimate guide for creating catchy headlines for facebook and twitter.

Iris Shoor at Startupmoon researched tweets ranging from least shared to most shared and came up with an outstanding learning on blog posts. They came up with a list of words that make posts more viral.

1. Using ‘Kill’, ‘Fear’, ‘Dark’, ‘Bleeding’, ‘War’ led to an increased engagement.
   Eg:Oracle makes more moves to kill open source mySQL”– #1 shared enterprise post on TechCrunch for 2012
2. Use a negative connotation instead of a positive one.
   Words like “No”, “Without” and “Stop” lead to many more shares. “The app you can’t live without” will go more viral than “The app which will improve your life”.
3. Use numbers – bigger numbers the better. 

   • Make lists : “8 reasons to…”, “15 tips to…” – Putting a number of items on your post makes it sound more easier to read
   • Use digits rather than words – “10 ways to…” works better than “Ten ways to…”.
   • Bigger the better –  “35 ways to…” will probably be more viral than “5 ways to…”.
   • Use time units – “How to x in 4 days”, “Tickets to WWDC sell out in under 2-min” and so on.
   • Place the number at the head of the sentence. “5 ways social networks are changing the world” will work better than “How social networks change the world in 5 ways”.

One of the thumb rules for creating content that people like is to create

• Educational Content
• Informational Content
• Entertaining Content

Iris’s article also emphasizes that headlines need to be educational.  Use phrases like:

1. “Introduction to”
2. “The beginners guide / The 5 min guide”
3. Use “DIY” in the headline

Surprisingly, using “How to…” in posts doesn’t add to the viral component.

Some more words found in viral posts, as per their report:

• Smart
• Surprising
• Science
• History
• Hacks (hacking, hackers, etc)
• Huge/ big
• Critical

Twitter

Twitter studied 20,000 promoted tweets over a 3 month period to give some insights for marketeers on running twitter campaigns. Here are some extracts from their study.

1. Ask for a download: This will increase your clicks by 13%
2. Ask for a retweet:  Tweets in timelines with an ask to retweet increased Retweets by an average of 311%.
3. Ask for a follow:  Tweets in timelines that asked for a follow increased follows by an average of 258%.
4. Ask for a reply: Tweets in timelines that highlight an ask to reply increased replies by an average of 334%

Dan Zarella has an amazing article listing the 20 words and phrases that get the most retweets. Some highlights from his blog:

1. you
2. twitter
3. please
4. retweet
5. post
6. blog
7. social
8. free
9. media
10. help
11. please retweet
12. great
13. social media
14. 10
15. follow
16. how to
17. top
18. blog post
19. check out
20. new blog post

Facebook

Kissmetrics has provided a good insight into facebook posts. Here is a summary from their post:

• Posts with photos receive 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more clickthroughs than normal posts
• Posts with 80 characters or less get 66% more engagement.
• “Question” posts get 100% more comments

A lot relies on the frequency of posting and the time of day for posting as well.

• On weekdays Facebook activity peaks around 3 PM
• Posing 1-2 times a day get 40% more engagement
• Posting 1-4 times a week gets 70% more engagement

However, an article by Buffer explains that simply posting images does not increase the engagement.

The post images need to be self-explanatory, users should be able to understand the image without any supporting text. Only then does the engagement go up.

 Summary:

• Use the right keywords
• Use the right phrases
• Use self-explanatory images
• Post at the right times
• Post at appropriate frequencies

What do you think? Can you think of anything more we can add to this list? It would be nice if you can mention it in the comments sections.

Original Article on the Sokasu blog

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