How to lure more RSS readers
Wednesday, September 8th, 2004Robert Scoble: “Write better headlines and you’ll get more readers.”
So true. I’m guilty of not putting any effort into my own weblog headlines, but that’s because I don’t really care how many readers I get here, and I have professional headline writers working for me at Slate and Wired.
You, however, you who have 300 or 3000 daily weblog readers and wish you had ten times as many, should always think about what headline would make a reader click on an entry as opposed to passing it by. Usually it’s a matter of making clear what the entry is about, and what the relevant new info or commentary in the post is.
I don’t have a set of rules for concocting headlines, but take a look at Matt Drudge in RSS for some great examples, even if you don’t care for his brand of journalism. Note that you can always tell what every Drudge article is about and why you might want to read it. They’re so concise and informative that I often just scan the headlines to know what the national gossip news of the day is. Media Matters for America is another source that’s good with the headline-as-summary.
The New York Times has great newsy headlines, useful examples for when you’re posting about some new development or finding. By contrast, the paper’s Opinion section headlines are notably vague, e.g. “A Health Care Idea” as opposed to something that hints specifically at what the idea is or who and what it involves. I didn’t feel that just because an unnamed person had an idea about health care, I needed to read it.
