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How to make a headline? With this content, you will learn copywriting in just 3 steps. I will give you the step-by-step process and the framework that I use with all my clients and in my blog.

Trust me, this content is one of the most important pieces I’ve written because I focus only on the main points.

How to make a headline: What is it?

How to make a headline? Before diving into this topic, we need to understand what a headline is. A headline is a powerful and brief statement that summarizes your content.

Think of the headline like the title of a movie—if the title isn’t engaging, why would people watch that movie or read your content?

If it’s still hard to understand, think of the headline as a promise to the reader, something they will get if they read your entire content.

What need to have in my headline?

Ok, you understand that a headline is basically a promise, but what does your headline need to have? Well, for me, every promise has to be:

• Clear (Don’t use complex words; try to be as simple as possible, like Richard Feynman in his lectures)
• Engaging (Tell the audience what they want to hear or discover)
• Specific (Don’t use generic terms or outcomes. Always be specific about what the reader will get)

However, keep in mind that whatever you promise, you’d better deliver. If not, it’s just clickbait, and people will not trust you in the long run.

How to make a headline: Why is important?

Before we dive into how to make a headline, remember when I said that your headline is like the title of a movie? It’s also the poster. So, no matter how many hours you spend creating that article, if the poster of your movie isn’t interesting enough, it will never attract a lot of people.

In summary, headlines are important because they primarily attract more people to your content. Over time, you will build an audience that will naturally see your content, but to increase your audience, the headline is key.

• Capture attention
• Improve SEO
• Crucial for encouraging people to share
• Increase the click-through rate

How to study about headlines

I’ve been a copywriter for a long time, so making headlines is now muscle memory. However, it was hard in the beginning. Trust me, the worst thing you can do is stare at a blank page and expect something to happen.

That said, I’ll share some tips on how I studied headlines. After this, making your own headlines will be much easier, trust me:

1. Learn the basics of copywriting, which I have whole content about. Click here to see my guide for beginners.
2. Focus only on the key elements, explore connections, and mix techniques.
3. Identify those key elements in headlines from marketing materials.
4. Compare materials and analyze why some are more successful than others.
5. Start writing based on your favorite examples of marketing materials.
6. Stay up-to-date with brand new headlines.
7. Read a lot, especially daily articles.
8. Challenge yourself by re-creating some materials.

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How to make a headline: How to do it in 3 steps with my framework?

At any point in your studies, I recommend using my 3-step framework to create a great headline. My advice is to follow the 8 steps I mentioned above first, as you’ll have a better understanding by then.

However, if you’re more of a hands-on person, you might do better by diving right in—so do what works best for you. As I said, this framework consists of 3 basic steps:

Step 1: Identify your audience

Remember when I said that your headline is like a promise? A key point to making that promise effective is knowing your audience. In other words, who is the person you want to attract with this headline?

This is important because if you make a promise to someone who already has those outcomes, it won’t matter, right? For instance, making a promise to reveal a secret from their favorite book wouldn’t work if they already know it.

To identify your audience, you need to do some research. You can start by asking these questions:

• What are the problems my audience is facing?
• How will this content solve one of those problems?
• What are the demographic aspects of my audience?

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Step 2: Structure your headline

My framework for your headline is Keyword + Psychological Trigger. Simple as that, but at the same time, it’s incredibly powerful, and you’ll understand why in a minute.

The keyword is a word or phrase that summarizes your content and helps reach an engaged audience, including potential clients if you’re selling something.

The psychological trigger makes the keyword more appealing, creating a near necessity to know your content. You can separate the keyword and the psychological trigger using a colon or combine them in the same phrase.

To prove what I’m saying, let’s analyze the headline of this post: “How to make a headline? [Learn Copywriting in 3 steps].”

“How to make a headline?” is the keyword for SEO, attracting people who want to learn how to do it. “Learn Copywriting in 3 steps” is the psychological trigger, utilizing Loss Aversion.

Step 3: Test, and then refine 

Copywriting is all about creating, testing, and refining. Test your audience, present your headline in the content, and observe what happens.

We know the fundamentals, but we can’t ignore the fact that if we don’t test, it’s impossible to know if your copy is good or can be improved.

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Uma publicação partilhada por Matheus Xavier Copy (@matheusxaviercopy)

In the long run, you’ll see if the headline was appealing based on the average click-through rate, and then you can refine and make changes as needed. So check out the brand new articles that we have on the blog to learn more and achieve the best results with your website.