How many headlines have I written in my 25-plus years in copywriting?

Andy, my partner in mousetraps and cheese, asked me this as we began the second episode of the Content Matters podcast.

I couldn’t answer the question. However, he had plenty more questions (as did I) and answering them made for a great 22 minute discussion on the all-important topic.

Here’s episode #2:
Headlines: Does Anything Matter More?

How do you write killer headlines? Should you aim to turn on readers or search engines?

This episode of the podcast gets into these questions and:

• How headlines are ammo in the war for attention
• How headlines are the key to social media success
• Headlines are no longer just the big bold words at the top of the page
• Do headline writers over-emphasize search?
• How to hack your way to writing killer headlines for web content
• How to borrow insights from the cover of pop culture magazines (and the native advertising industry)
• Barry’s age-old “how to” get started lesson
• Andy’s not-so-secret formula for looking at numbers first
• The magnetic power of the illustrious curiosity gap
• The dubious double headline that screams “click me”

In the cheese and mousetrap segment…

• Are you fulfilling your promises?
• The connection between the headline and the growth of your email list

Some click-worthy comments

We haven’t figured out how to put hyperlinks in our soundtrack, but suspect you’ll want to visit some of the resources we mentioned:

• Feldman Creative’s post about keywords
• Headline Analyzer tool from Advanced Marketing Institute
• Jon Morrow’s 52 headline hacks (a cheat sheet for writing blog posts)
• Native Advertising Leaderboard
• 9-Letter Cheat Sheet for writing H-E-A-D-L-I-N-E-S that Work

If you’re enjoying Content Matters, join us for the live recording sessions on Blab, write a review on iTunes, or tweet this…