Will you click this because the headline is a question?

headlinewritingOrganisational use of the Internet increasingly revolves around the production of content in various forms to engage with their user base.  Suffice to say, with so many groups churning out content, the competition for our attention is fiercer than ever.  As a result an increasing amount of research and study is devoted to understanding what makes us reach content.

Whilst the likes of pay-per-click advertising and email marketing have taught us the importance of a good headline, things have really taken off as social media usage has mushroomed.  For instance MIT have uncovered what they believe to be the secrets to Twitter success based upon that headline, whilst other research showed the propensity of people to share content they haven’t even read, based largely on both the headline and the reputation of the author.

The use of questions in a headline has widely been regarded as an essential tool in securing those all important click throughs.  New research has explored whether that’s still the case in the social age.

The researchers explored a science based Twitter feed with nearly 6,500 followers.  Each story from the website was tweeted twice, with an hour separating each tweet.  The first tweet used a statement based headline, ie Power corrupts.  The second tweet however reframed things as a question that was either self-referencing, as in Is your boss intoxicated by power? or non-self-referencing, as in Are bosses intoxicated by power?

The researchers found that the self-referencing headlines, such as the one used in this post, were clicked on average 175% more often than the statement headlines, but also 150% more often than the non-self-referencing question headlines.

They tested the hypothesis in a more commercial environment too, finding that when products were listed on a Norwegian auction site with a self-referencing headline, they were 257% more likely to be clicked on, which was nearly twice as much as the non-self-referencing question headline.

Of course, one may question whether the outcomes were influenced by other features of the headline than purely their format, and the research doesn’t really delve into the why’s of their findings, but nevertheless, the recommendation is clear, that if you want to secure click throughs, make sure you include a question that references the reader.

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11 thoughts on “Will you click this because the headline is a question?

  1. Over the years we've seen many contradicting stories when it comes to social media and consumer behavior. There've been several studies on sharing without reading but, to me, that's perfectly fine; perhaps some of those they share with will be interested enough to read it. It’s something I’ve actually seen bloggers rant about and it’s baffling to me why they would be outraged over the “why”. I understand wanting to understand in order to maximize exposure but some people are just outraged.

    I know it can be useful to form titles into questions for search as well. We've seen search inquiries in the past what were exact matches for question titled posts. Our YouTube videos titled as a question seem to do well as well. I believe that's because people often tend to ask Google a question rather than search for a particular phrase. That wouldn't explain the Twitter studies though, since Google can't index the tweets. Nice topic Adi 🙂

  2. I'd heard this kind of thing before, but interesting that the increase is so pronounced. Didn't expect it to leap quite so much.

  3. Will you read my comment because it is a question?

    Everyone is saying we should do this. However, it's good to see the numbers that back this up. I agree with Andrea above. It is quite amazing how pronounced the increase in engagement is. I think the psychology behind it, is that our brain has to process a question with the expectation of a response.

  4. I agree. I don't know about the question part, but whenever I've written a You headline, speaking directly to the user and clearly explaining the benefit to the reader, I've gotten better results. I've had more retweets and feedback for such posts. Thanks for highlighting the power of a great headline that speaks to the user.

  5. Wow, what a stat! I'm the first one to be skeptical of stats because it's too easy to manipulate them or to end up with confounding factors but in this case there's a pretty strong "common sense" element to this, too. I'm fascinated by headlines because (confession) I do sometimes share posts without reading them – if I know the author and the headline is good. And what is "good"? I do like questions because they immediately beg an answer and you can't help but start thinking about it… then wonder what the author said… then read it for validation (or sometimes to learn something new). Not only questions but "self-referencing" questions… now that's something I'm adding to my "must try" list for my next post!

  6. When we advertise on Adwords, our landing page always has at the very least a very compelling headline, a bullet list of benefits, and a very clear call to action. That can be a button to another page or an email lead capture form or whatever, but I've never seen a landing page perform well with any amount of traffic without at least those three elements. So as we're talking about paid traffic, remember that it's also the advertising on the page itself too that needs to be optimized. You can hire a conversion rate optimization specialist like Simon if you feel like you need some help with that, his number is 240-455-3886.

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