5 Effective Tips for Titles that Get People to Click and Retweet

May 14, 2012 by Daniel Sharkov|

Are you getting your content retweeted and shared? Are you happy with the numbers?

Maybe some of you are getting decent referral traffic from places like Twitter and are able to get people to tweet them.

The truth however is that there are also hundreds of bloggers who are never able to make their content go viral. How much followers you have plays an important role, that’s for sure!

One often neglected element
that can make a huge difference however are the titles.

After testing and comparing a ton of different titles for my articles, I came to know some ways to make them more retweetable. Just for the record, I have done the testing with two tools – Buffer and StumbleUpon’s shortener, both providing click tracking.

In the following article, I will share with you five, hopefully useful tips for coming up with titles that get more retweets on Twitter:

Encourage Clicks with
Specific Words

What I am referring to here is
including various adjectives that aim to show your article in a positive light so to say. Those adjectives seem to spark curiosity and thus get people to click through.

In bold you can see those words straight from the titles of some of my best performing articles:

10
Effective Tips to Help You Build Trust and Get Your Readers to Take Action 9 Random (but
Useful ) Tips on Improving your Writing Skills 5
Simple Techniques that Will Make Your Next Blog Post Better 7
Effective Ways to Keep Your Twitter Stream Alive and Get People Clicking 6
Quick Tips to Help Organize Your Cluttered Workspace for Maximum Productivity

The words in bold were added at a later time on all of the articles.
The increase I got after the changes ranges from 30% up to 200%.

Don’t be Scared of Writing Long Titles

Recently I wrote an article about article lengthand whether long and in-depth blog posts are a good idea. In the article I came to the conclusion that as far as content is concerned, short is the way to go.

When it comes to titles though, it is a different story.
It turned out that short and straight-to-the-point headlines are not the ones that get more retweets.

The article “7 Effective Ways to Keep Your Twitter Stream Alive and Get People Clicking”, which I mentioned above, had a shorter title – “7 Ways to Keep Your Twitter Stream Alive”. The results were far from impressive with the latter.

My advice is to go for longer and more descriptive titles.
The more words there are, the better the chance to get people to see your tweet and then share it.

Don’t get Carried Away with Long Titles

The one thing when it comes to length is not to overdo. Although I said that longer is better if you want higher click-through rates, there is a line you should not cross.

Based on my observations
the perfect balance is between 60 and 70 characters. Go for less and many won’t even notice your tweet, go for longer and people will skip your tweet before they reach the link at the end.

Include Twitter Related Terms

One of the sure-fire ways to get traffic from a specific social media site is to actually write content aimed towards that site.

It’s quite logical really. Such articles concern everyone using the service no matter which niche or topic they are covering. You might get shares from folks who wouldn’t otherwise spread the word about your content.

So based on that strategy,
including words such as “Twitter”, “retweets” and “followers” is sure to grab more attention hence clicks and retweets.

Know the Value Behind the Words

Of course writing and tweeting a great title is sure to encourage visits and shares. A title that creates a bigger expectation than what you can deliver is not something I would recommend though.

Golden rule when it comes to crafting the perfect headline
is to be able to actually back up the claims you put there.

Failing to achieve that won’t have an impact on the clicks you get. Nevertheless those clicks will rarely lead to retweets, comments and new subscribers, which is what you are after.

Some of the more active tweeps might even mention you in a negative light. Such small complaints do add up and
can end up ruining the trust you have gained.

Conclusion Adding adjectives, such as “effective”, “simple” and “easy” Writing descriptive titles that grab attention Including terms, related to Twitter in one way or another Crafting titles that are between 60-70 characters in lengthYour Turn

Now it’s your turn! Have I missed something?
What are your ways to make people notice your articles’ headlines? Feel free to share your feedback below!

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