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Here’s How You Can Write Better Headlines, According to Claude Hopkins
4 Headline Writing Tips From the Father of Modern Advertising
If you don’t know who Claude Hopkins is, I understand. He was born 155 years ago (1866), and he died in 1932.
Now you might be wondering what you can learn about writing headlines from someone who never touched a computer keyboard. Haven’t things changed in the past 100 years? Even the past 10 years?
Hasn’t marketing and advertising changed since the early 1900s?
Don’t people have much shorter attention spans?
Not really. Claude Hopkins had different goals — for example, he’d want to get people to read a newspaper ad rather than an article on Medium. But I’d say those two are more similar than you think.
And people still had short attention spans in the early 1900s. No one was reading every line of text when they opened up their newspaper. They were doing the same thing you are — skimming for value.
To discover what they wanted — value — they’d look for the attention-grabbing headlines. Irresistible headlines.
People do the same exact thing when they’re on the Medium homepage.
They scan and look for the titles that sound the most interesting and inspiring. They only click on the articles that they need to read.
The 5–10 words you put at the top of your article determine whether someone will click on your article or not. Your headlines make or break your articles.
I can’t think of a better person to learn from than Claude Hopkins. David Ogilvy — another brilliant, world-renowned copywriter said Mr. Hopkins was, “The father of modern advertising” which simply means we should be paying attention to his advice.
These headline tips are from Claude Hopkins’ book, Scientific Advertising. When you have time, you can (and should) read the entire book here: ScientificAdvertising.com
Tip #1 - Use your headlines as a filter
You might think you want to reach everyone and get as many views as possible. That shouldn’t your goal at all.
