The Secret of a Great Blog Title by Lucy Rycroft

I've recently had a three-month blog break. It's been great to take a step back, look at what I've been blogging over the last few months, and ask myself honestly...

WHO CARES??

Yup, that's right. In a course I've recently completed about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation - helping a blog/website to show up more in Google), the advice was to ask yourself this very question at the end of writing a blog post.

Because blogging is all about your audience. Book-writing, I would argue, is more about the writer, at least for a first book. Of course you hope that your audience will appreciate what you've written, but the inspiration for what to write comes from you, and not usually from your readers.

So if I write a blog post, then sit back and look at it and ask 'Who cares?' I may find that, in fact, only I really care.

Imagine that I've been studying the book of Acts, and want to share some findings with my blog audience. How would I write the title?

'3 Things I've Learnt from Acts' isn't very inspiring - who cares what I think about anything? I'm hardly Michele Guinness. Literally only my Dad would read this one.

An improvement would be: '3 Life Lessons from the Book of Acts' - this takes the 'me' out of it, and starts to intrigue the reader: Ooh, I wonder what these life lessons are! I reckon a few of my readers would go for this one.

And, much as I often cringe at having to write these kinds of titles, it's all about the hyperbole:

'3 Amazing Life Lessons from Acts that will Radically Change your Perspective'. Ooh, now I'm interested! I wonder how my perspective is going to be changed by reading this post? This has the potential to reach far and wide, picking up some new readers who hadn't come across my blog before.

Here are some other examples:

'A lovely holiday in the Peak District' NO! So what? Who cares?

'The UK's Best-Kept Holiday Destination Secret!' Now you're talking! I wonder where it might be?

Yep, it's click-bait. But clicks are what you want if you're hoping to increase traffic to your blog or website, and sell more books through having an enlarge audience.

What about:

'Why I Believe the Bible Supports Single Adoption' - this is actually something I'm due to write very soon on my own blog! But, again, if I stuck to this title - would anyone really be bothered?

Here are some alternatives:

'Single Adoption is Supported by the Bible (and Here's the Proof!)'

'5 Biblical Reasons to Support Single Adopters'

It might seem odd, initially, to have to learn to speak in this way when writing your title, but remember: it's just a title. The rest of your blog post can be written in your style, your voice - you don't need to change a thing about how you usually write.

It's incredibly important, though, that your title sparks people's interest, as when they're scrolling through social media, your title is all they see. It's not like skimming through a magazine, where you have the luxury of being able to read a few lines of an article first before deciding whether it's worth bothering with. Your title really is crucial if you want those clicks!

The baseline is this: Am I offering value to my readers? Does the title neatly express what they will get if they click? Does it encourage them to sidestep from what they were doing and come on over to my blog to have a look? Am I inducing a 'FOMO' (Fear Of Missing Out) in my potential readers?

This is the secret!

If our aim is always to view our blogs from our readers' perspective, then this will help us to sharpen up what we're offering, hopefully increasing our audience as we do so.

Lucy Rycroft writes Christian parenting blog Desertmum. Formerly a teacher and PGCE lecturer, she now divides her time between freelance writing and raising her kids. Her first book, 'Redeeming Advent', releases on 11.10.19, and a children's book (which has spent most of its life being delayed) will hopefully follow early in 2020. Lucy lives in York with her husband and four children.