What the Trump Indictment, ChatGPT, and Rick Astley All Have in Common

Made you look! See the power of a great headline to turn heads?

Actually, in this case, this could be a terrible headline. Personally, I'm so sick of headlines about ChatGPT and Trump that I'm more likely to ignore this than to actually click through. See the power of a bad headline to turn people away?

See the power of understanding your audience when writing headlines? This headline is gold for one audience, and lead for another. And you may not know which is which ahead of time. So it's a numbers game or a guessing game. (Although if you use A/B testing...you can actually know what works and build from there...but that's a conversation for another day.)

If you've ever taken one of my workshops, you know I talk about the importance of good headlines/titles for your presentations, slides, charts, etc. Research has shown that good titles that actually say something about your data lead to increased understanding and memory.

So I'm not just talking about clickbait here.

But, let's also talk about clickbait. I tried to write a clickbait headline for this article. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. But here's the thing, the act of writing that title actually helped me think about what this article was going to be about.

This is important...so let's say that again. Writing that title helped me know what this article was really about.

Yes, you need to understand what you're creating about BEFORE you can write a headline. The headline should reflect the content in the article (or presentation or chart or whatever). BUT, when you summarize that content in your title and if you specifically think of the most clickbait-like version of the title you can possible come up with, that will help you clarify your thoughts and direct your creative process as you create that content.

For instance, I could have written this article and written a headline that said "Headlines are important and help you think and prioritize". That's literally what I'm arguing, but kind of boring, not inspiring, and not really clarifying what I knew I wanted to say. The clickbait one is more engaging and, more importantly for my purposes, really helped me hone in on the power of a headline to help you clarify your thoughts, with a great case example built in, to boot!

So the next time you're titling a chart or a slide or a presentation or report...or really anything. Sure, write a normal boring version. But then let your freak flag fly, try to think of an outrageous version. Even if you don't publish it, I guarantee you it will help you clarify TO YOURSELF what you're actually talking about. And it might make you adjust what you're saying and how you say it.

Oh, and it might help you come up with a more engaging publishable title, even if it needs to be toned back a bit.

BTW, for anyone who wants to know what Rick Astley has to do with any of this...I guess the idea is that sometimes a headline doesn't deliver what you were hoping/expecting. And while that most classic of all memes proves that this can sometimes be a joy...other times the payoff is disappointing and that doesn't do anything for anybody. However great a headline you might write, the payoff better be commensurate with the promise!

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