Inspiring readers to consider your titles and click through to your article is no small feat; getting feedback and polling for your article headlines is the best way to ensure your work will float to the top and ride the waves of success.
You could very well be the most talented, eloquent author on the market. Your prose, your tone of voice, the compelling content that spills forth from your fingertips with every key-press. The articles and blogs you create might very well be generation-defining.
If you cannot get good web traffic to your site, then nobody will read your article. There are likely troves of quality content on the internet - enough to fill a modern Library of Alexandria - that wastes away in the depths of the web. Unloved, unappreciated, unread. It’s a tragedy to think that quality writing could slip through the ether and tumble into obscurity, simply because it didn’t have a title gripping enough to get more traffic to it's content; the reality is, that is just how humans work.
Every day on the internet, consumers are exposed to thousands of marketers, authors, sellers, and content creators; people who are all grasping and vying for the same limited waking hours any one person has to offer. At any point in time, consumers are likely to only give just a few seconds of consideration to any proposal that is sent their way - whether that be an invitation to click on a video, or an email subject line espousing details about a limited-time sale. This is why it’s vitally important to create an eye-catching, intriguing title for your work; something that will compel readers to share your blog posts before their brain has even fully processed the words on the page.
With Helpfull surveying, authors and content creators can make sure they are creating the kind of content their audiences are looking for by testing article headlines in front of an audience of Helpfull panelists. Using simple A/B testing or Split-Choice surveying is often the most simple way to receive considered, effective feedback on your designs; the votes given by poll recipients provides creators a way to narrow down your options, until you're left with a title that appears front and center in a Google search and drives traffic to your blog.
In our post-internet world, readers are consuming digital content at an ever-increasing pace. When creating headlines and titles for your content, it’s important to avoid the pitfalls that many marketers and bloggers fall into. Consumers have grown increasingly aware of the overt marketing tactics some content creators employ - often dubbed “clickbait” - when trying to draw attention to their work.
These are just a few of the ways authors can increase blog traffic by creating titles that are gripping, effective, and clickable. Often the best practice for marketers is to develop a series of different titles - each utilizing one or more of the above techniques - and testing their effectiveness with a consumer test audience.
By now, you should have a list of titles you’ve developed - ideas you like, and are ready to test in front of a new set of eyes.
For our first survey, we’re looking to conduct a split testing text-comparison survey; all we need are our eight best titles, and we’re ready to begin. To showcase how Helpfull is the perfect app for getting the titles you need to effectively promote your blog, we asked 100 panelists for their consideration on our blog title list. We wanted to title a list-style article that talks about how homeowners can save money when heating their homes during the winter.
Since we’ve developed our mock headlines following the tips outlined earlier in the blog post, we know any one of them would fit - should we choose to run the headline without any testing. We’re looking to see which one of these titles is going to be the most effective at capturing the attention of our target audience - thereby driving our website traffic and promoting our blog posts.
After just 20 minutes, our polling audience made their voices heard. They were asked to vote on which title was the “most gripping and memorable”; the result - The 4 Simple Tricks That Can Cut Your Winter Heating Bill In Half edges out with 27% of the vote. It’s a strong contender, but it only barely won over the runner-up; we would like a decisive answer as to which headline is the most effective, so we’ll need to run another survey. Since we want more traffic to our blog site, it's vital to the best available headline.
This time, we run a simple A/B test with another 100 Helpfull panelists. We take the two top-performing titles from the last survey, and turn to our Helpfull audience one more time.
Another 100 votes, and 4 Simple Tricks proves yet again to be the most effective headline - this time, by a much wider margin of votes.
In less than 40 minutes, and with just two simple surveys, we’ve found a winning headline that is proven to capture attention for our new blog posts and drives traffic to our blog.
As well as blogs, Helpfull surveys can be utilized to develop effective headlines for news affiliates and traditional media outlet blog posts.
Getting an audience to not only view, but share your new blog content is imperative to the function of your business; if readers are not engaged by your headline, they are not going to drive more traffic to your website. And they definitely will not share your content with their friends and family. Keeping with the trend of regressing attention spans, a sizable portion of readers will only read the headline of your article; getting them to take the extra step of clicking through to your work requires you to engage their curiosity.
For our second survey, we’ve been asked to title an article about a massive toy recall affecting the 2020 holiday season. We need a title that is going to inform the readers about the content of our article in a way that urges them to get their eyes on our news; this is one of the best practices to use to make your content stand out among a sea of similar content. Take a look at our latest batch of titles:
In contrast to our first survey, the answer we receive from our polling audience is far more decisive. A Very Unmerry Christmas - 400,000 Toys Recalled in 2020 Holiday Season was given 25% of the vote; out of the eight candidates tested, the Helpfull panelists chose this as the “title they were most likely to click on''. They found the headline to be attention-grabbing and informative. It was described as being “not click-bait, like some of the rest”, and audiences enjoyed the reference to Christmas in the title.
After reading the dozens of new insights provided to us by our Helpfull panelists, we’ve been given a much deeper understanding of what audiences look for and respond to for our headline. And to think - it only took 20 minutes!
With Helpfull’s image-comparison testing, new blog content creators can quickly test the effectiveness of their graphics and photos.
When it comes to grabbing your reader’s attention, the thumbnail photo is just as - if not more - important than your article headline. Humans are visual creatures that respond to images far more tangibly than they do text. The photo you choose to represent your article can color the emotional headspace the reader takes on before approaching your content. Images can promote strong positive - or negative - reactions in a reader’s mind.
You should be giving the same considerations towards effectiveness with your graphics as you do your headlines; surveying Helpfull panelists is a sure-fire way to get quick, measured insight into how audiences will respond to your article thumbnail.
For our final survey, we’ve conducted an image-comparison survey that asks recipients to consider five different images. Drawing from the second survey, we’re looking to find a graphic to match the blog post title we had developed prior - “A Very Unmerry Christmas - 400,000 Toys Recalled In 2020 Holiday Season.”
After testing our graphics with 200 panelists, we had been given a decisive winner. The image recipients responded to the most strongly was that depicting a sad, presumably-crying child. The background surrounding the child has been made grayscale, to evoke a much stronger emotional response in our test audience.
The comments we received from our panelists mentioned how the image seemed to fit the tone of our article headline better than the rest; the powerful emotional response evoked by the image seemed justified, and inspired readers to want to learn more about the impact of this theoretical toy recall.
The ability to test headlines and graphics with an audience of thousands makes Helpfull the premier tool for content creators.
Inspiring readers to consider your titles and click through to your article is no small feat; in this digital world, a vast ocean of competition threatens to swallow whole content that fails to make itself uniquely recognizable. Getting considered feedback and polling for your article headlines is the best way to ensure your work will float to the top of your customers' search engines.
An intuitive user-interface, coupled with the ability to gather hundreds of consumer responses in just minutes, are just a few of the features that make Helpfull the ultimate tool for any artist, marketer, author, or content creator.
Refine your marketing - sign up with Helpfull today, and get surveying within minutes!
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