Today, Seth Godin wrote about the importance of headlines. Sure, we all know that writing a good headline for an article is perhaps the most important part of the writing process.
After all, if you can’t communicate succinctly what you are writing about, why would anyone want to read any further?
But being able to write a good headline isn’t only a skill you need when writing a blog post or some sales copy. It is important in your daily life. You should be thinking of the best subject line for an email so that it gets read. You should take the time to craft the objective line on your resume and the first line of your cover letter. You should think of the first line you want to use when you talk to the attractive girl or guy at a party. (I’ve found that the combination of “hello” and “what’s your name?” work better than anything else.)
Joe Sugarman
A good headline does three things:
1) It makes clear what you are writing about without being wordy. This is obvious but so often overlooked.
2) It catches eyes. A clever or even just carefully-written article or well-crafted first line will get more attention than something boring. Life is short. People are busy. Be interesting.
3) It starts the “slippery slide.” Sugarman, the brilliant direct mail copywriter that he is, writes that the title is designed to get a reader to read the first line. The job of the first line is to move on to the second line. And so forth. When a reader gets involved in a piece of writing, they start to slide down the rhetorical slippery slide. Then you’ve captured your audience’s attention and move closer to whatever your intended goal may be.
Attention is hard to come by these days. Communicating succinctly and getting your point across in as few words as possible will help your writing immensely.
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