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Delivering on Your Article Title Promise
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Your article title is more than just an accurate description about what the reader will find in your article body, as it’s a promise you make to build a trust relationship with your readership (prospective & current clients).
Today, reflect on how well you’ve been delivering on your article title promise(s):
- Did you fulfill your readers expectations in the article body?
- Did you answer the question you posed in your article title?
- Does every paragraph of your article in some way relate to delivering on what you promised in the title?
- Are you wasting the readers time by purposely baiting them with a juicy title and lots of filler in your article body?
- Does your article GET TO THE POINT? (instead of rambling on and on and on?)
- Are you an expert who delivers more value in the article body than you expect to receive in return?
- Did you bite off more than you can deliver in your article title? Should you narrow your topic further?
Having a very smart article title is the key to hooking more readers, but the article title is only the envelope in your article marketing campaign. What’s inside your article envelopes will determine if the reader is satisfied enough to begin to understand and/or trust you. Violate that trust and you’ll have a reader who will feel cheated for having wasted his or her time with your article.
Additional reading on this topic:
How do you ensure that your articles deliver on the promise you made in your article titles?
 Posted by Christopher M. Knight on June 15, 2007 at 9:39 am | Views 1,028 | |
23 Comments »
Doran Roggio writes:One way I like to do the articles to be sure I am giving what I promised is to:
1. Pose a few questions on the subject of the title to get the reader thinking along those lines more intently.
2. Answer the questions posed
3. Summarize with something for them to do that enables the reader to put into practice what was hinted they would know (accomplish) by the title.
Susan Scharfman writes:Susan
Chinmay Chakravarty writes:At times I get a dazzling title and I never want to lose it. So I write the article body in view of the title and try to justify it fully.
Sometimes I write the article body first and have a brainstorming session to get the title right.
My goal is always to have a very interesting title for the readers and never to disappoint them later in the body too.
Well, I try my very best.
Christina Sponias writes:I think a good idea is to give the real title of an article only in the end, after writing it. I give a title when I start writing and in the end I usually change it, depending on the information or the advices I gave.
Many times we want to write about certain subject but when we start doing it, so many topics appear in our mind that we don’t know which ones we shall develop in the specific article we are writing at the time.
Ruth gave us a very good suggestion. If we see that we are changing subject and we start having many new ideas, we better keep them in a document for the next articles.
There is no point on misleading our readers, promising something in the title and giving another in the body. A juicy title that doesn’t correspond to the content can only irritate them.
Christopher M. Knight writes:I think it really comes down to whether or not you are an author who delivers on what you promise. Most authors either already know they deliver what they promise and to them, today’s newsletter didn’t apply to them. I suspect it doesn’t apply to you.
It’s important that newbie experts and those who write thin content get the *wake up* call today that the content quality bar is raising again as it does every month.
This whole issue probably applies more to a ‘marketer’ brain writer who over-hypes the title with really high quality copy writing and then they don’t have the genuine expertise to write the article.
Edward Weiss writes:I don’t write topic sentences (although that’s a good idea.) I just free write quickly through. It takes no longer than 10 minutes to generate between 250-400 words and that’s that … an article delivering on its promise.
D'Ann Laws writes:Some subjects you could write a book, so I pick two or three main ideas and stay within those ideas. I may write on the subject again and use a different aspect.
Leslie West writes:When I read several short articles (250 - 400) I usually come away feeling like a string of firecrackers have gone off. I enjoy seeing the content as well as, the authors skill in weaving the ideas together.
Christina Sponias writes: Josh Spaulding writes: Diane Dutton writes:My title is direct, and surely not politically correct. The article then presents the issue and the solution. The reading public is not here to read War and Peace.!
I love your site!
Jan A Meyer writes:I Think one should really have something to convey to your readers before you start to write. Once you are happy with your message, then only must one develop a title that will draw readers attention - a title like very short ad!
Hannah writes:However, you should be able to back up your headline with good content. If you don’t keep your reader interested, you will lose him after the first paragraph. Your content should provide a solution to the problem the prospect has. Only when he sees that you know what you are talking about, will he decide on further action.
If you don’t offer what the prospect wants, there would ne no further action. As simple as that. It is therefore of the utmost importance for your business that you capture his attention and keep his interest.
Lance Winslow writes:Interesting dialogue indeed.
You know many people feel it is okay to embellish “titles of articles” because the evening news does it every day.
“Late Breaking News - New startling information in the Natalie Holloway unsolved murder mystery”
Then the media baits you into watching 7 minutes of commercials and two more un-related news segments where they cut of the interviewees mid-sentence, then they tell you something you already know, do not care about or is simply irrelevant.
The print media is just as bad. So much “fluff” and leading embellishment that it has trained most in the society to act and write like that. Of course it has also trained people to become numb to the news and leery of purported trickery in article titling. Using such tricks and tactics often works, but a stupid person may not be your target market, so article marketers should be thinking here.
Additionally, if you trick your good potential clientele they will be somewhat upset, although some marketers use this to lure them further and further, as their desire grows to seek the real information, then they pitch them with an offer: “buy this information” click here to buy, with a low price of $19.99 and throw in free ginzu knives? These are all tactics of the get-rich-quick crowds.
I would certianly like to here thoughts on my comments? Agree, disagree, have a solution? Think on it.
Christina Sponias writes:I noticed you are always trying to help Chris in his arduous mission to educate article writers. With your comment you are explaining why he wrote about the juicy titles that have nothing to do with the article’s content.
It can really only be applied to marketers. Regular writers usually don’t use this tactic, which I think is in fact a mistake. Ezine readers are not like TV watchers. If they don’t like the article they started to read, they simply stop reading it; they don’t need to wait its end in order to watch their favourite series, like they wait the end of the commercials that interrupt programs and movies.
Lance Winslow writes:To your comment I would say that even an underwhelmed reader who does not like an article will “click a link out” perhaps a slight percentage of the time rather than hitting the back button on their browser. The Internet Marketer will often have an enticing byline to get them to do just that.
Writers of article, who are not engaged in marketing, might be trying to convince someone of their opinion or trying to get them to do something else, thus in a way some of these writers are in fact marketing - no, not a consulting job, product or service, but rather an idea, opinion, trend or concept. Of course, none of that side discussion is the intent of my comment, but I would like your opinion on this diverted issue.
My original comments are that some article marketers imitate other media and consider it business as usual think that it is “okay” when in actuality it is somewhat pathetic. Article marketers often mimic what they observe on the Internet, in print, on the radio or on TV or perhaps a combination.
Yes, I agree that Chris has a challenge educating the some 50,000 plus article authors out there with many more coming on board each and every day; not an easy job at all. What are your thoughts about these thoughts?
Diane Dutton writes:In all of the pubilcity programs I have attended to gain attention to my book, the producers in print media, TV and radio are looking for a good HOOK.
So, it makes sense that those writing articles who have written a book would lean toward a good HOOK for the title of the article.
The true measure of the article is the article itself. Once a writer is seen to be a statistician or a watch builder, writing the next version of War and Peace, the reader will know, I don’t think I want to waste my time with this one, even if the title is entertaining.
Quality will work - really!
Christina Sponias writes:I guess Chris was trying to show to every author that if he or she doesn’t write about what is promised in the title, no matter which his or her intentions may be, the reader will simply lose his or her confidence.
Chris was trying to explain to those that imagine that it’s a good idea to make someone read his or her article, even though it is not what it was supposed to be according to the juicy title it has, that the reader will not do what these authors want. This tactic is wrong and doesn’t have good results.
Writers or marketers that imagine that their readers will forget what they wanted to read from the beginning and will follow their ideas instead of looking for what they really wanted to learn are misunderstanding the readers’ behaviour. The reader is not a child that can easily be misled. If you don’t give to the reader what he or she wants, he or she won’t accept what you are offering him or her instead of what he or she really wants.
I have a direct contact with my customers when I sell them the clothes I have in my store, for 15 years now. It is a waste of time to try to convince someone to buy something they don’t want to. It’s hard even to convince them to buy what they really want from you, because there is too much competition. A good marketer is the one that gives to his customer what he wants and much more, that goes well with what he wants. You can’t go against the customer’s desire. This is a silly tactic that doesn’t work.
Now I would like to talk about the importance of the title, because I want to help Chris is his arduous mission, because now I’m part of this Ezine and I want it to be always in the top as much as they do. This Ezine depends on the writers and marketers that send here their articles and they depend on the customers that will buy their products through the publicity they have thanks to this Ezine. We all are partners here, because we all want this Ezine to be in the top, so that we’ll be in the top with it and this way sell our products. There is too much competition in the Internet, as well as everywhere in our world. So, we have to be the best!
I hope I can help the marketers and the writers that don’t know how to write an article like Chris, Lance and many others are trying to do.
The title is very important and we must respect our readers and give them in the title a short description of the content of our article. We must be sincere and make our readers like what we do for them. This is the only way they’ll accept everything we are offering them.
In your title don’t try to put too many keywords, because this way it won’t have a good ranking among many others that are more specific. Don’t try to cover too much in a title only in order to have many keywords there. If you are talking about something be loyal to your subject and give to your article a specific title that won’t confuse your readers and that will have a clear possibility to have a good ranking in its category. If in your article you are talking about many topics all together, it doesn’t mean that your title has to be that complex. Be specific and easy to understand. Be objective and focus on your goal.
Denis Bonneau writes:My best articles seem to follow a consistent path in that the original idea, or at least the approach, changes during the writing process. This is because I don’t have a bias toward supporting a prewritten title.
I have however, mistakenly made my titles too short. I wrote one article entitled “Regrettable” on ezinearticles.com that really gave no clue as to the content. For an established columnist this would not be an issue, but as a beginner in publishing I need something for the reader to latch onto. Even though I’m not writing for profit I still like to acquire as many readers as possible. Live and learn.
Denis Bonneau
Alan Hocking writes: Lance Winslow writes: Nancy Lowery writes:RSS feed for comments on this post.
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The final title reflects what is actually inside and will generate interest. It’s the most important part of getting an article published or read. I have a mental checklist of - what will get this article published and what is the true meaning or theme of the article.