What We Can Learn from Inaccurate Titles

Posted on 16. Sep, 2009 by Isaac Yassar in Uncategorized

inaccurateHi folks!

Do you like inaccurate titles? Do readers like inaccurate titles?  Does anyone like inaccurate titles?

I know I don’t, I hate them. Inaccurate titles tend to give readers some feeling of being deceived. It is not too good for business. Unfortunately, I met them many times lately on blogosphere and YouTube, two places where I hang out quite often. Why would I write this post anyway ;-)

However, with a case study, we can learn a few positive things from inaccurate titles:

Case study

People come to read a blog post titled “One Big Reason Why Your Blog Stop Growing” (fictive, just for example). In the article, a writer / blogger explains how his blog was hacked then stopped growing. The hacker was actually his own friend, who did it just for fun and joking.

When people visit such title, they hope to learn an important factor (probably their own habits) that can make their blog stop growing. But the article only explains why the writer’s blog stop growing, not the readers’. And the stop is caused by an uncommon factor that rarely happens to other people than him.

As it’s mostly about the writer, the usage of “Your” in the title is a big misleading mistake. The accurate title supposes to be “One Big Reason Why My Blog Stop Growing”. It’s not a bad title still. People will want to learn from the writer’s experience. And they will quickly know what the blog post is saying, without feeling deceived later on.

What we can learn

We need to be careful in choosing our titles if we want to have many readers. Once a reader feels annoyed or deceived by inaccurate titles, he / she will lose trust on us, no matter if the content of the post is still worthy reading. It is bad for building a better blog.

Though Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com says that “You” is one of the most important words in blogging, let’s not blindly put it in our titles just to make them more compelling. Readers are not dumb, they can figure out if the post is about them or not (assuming you = readers).

Tags: Copywriting, title

19 Responses to “What We Can Learn from Inaccurate Titles”

  1. LetUpdate

    16. Sep, 2009

    Title choosing is the biggest obstacle for me right now. I end up with bad title sometimes.

    Reply to this comment

  2. David | ilcantone.com

    16. Sep, 2009

    We have to be accurate with the titles we choose, but at the same time this title has to be compelling to attract readers. Sometimes it´s difficult to me to find the correct title.

    But you´re right, we can´t write a compelling title but not enough accurate because we could lose readers, and that´s not good :)

    David

    Reply to this comment

  3. KPerrone

    16. Sep, 2009

    Good article. I hate it when people use a false title just to get peoples attention and then the article has nothing to do with the title. Very annoying. I try to pick something that draws attention and sums up what the post is about.

    Reply to this comment

  4. Asswass

    17. Sep, 2009

    That Blog title sounds like a pitch line for selling something. If that story si true then that guy is an idiot.

    Reply to this comment

  5. earningstep

    17. Sep, 2009

    yeah.. title sure have nice connection with seo and search engine. choosing the right title will bring lot of traffic from search engine and this means money

    Reply to this comment

  6. Isaac Yassar

    17. Sep, 2009

    Thanks David, Kevin, Asswass, and Cienik for sharing. Accurate titles are truly good for business, false titles are really bad for business. Btw the example title above is fictive, but inspired from a real title ;-)

    Reply to this comment

  7. Tech-Freak Stuff

    17. Sep, 2009

    Deceiving you readers is the biggest mistake you may ever do. You must just remember that your Readers may be pissed off if you misguide them.
    And When you don’t find what you expect in the article, it is really very irritating.

    Reply to this comment

  8. Mr. I

    17. Sep, 2009

    Most bad title are a results of writer’s desire to “stand out of crowd”. What’s the use of a fancy title that does not make any sense? It’s much better to use a simple one that actually tells the reader the real idea behind article.

    For example, the title above could have been much better as “How My Blog Got Hacked”. This could even have attracted some sympathy from readers!

    Reply to this comment

  9. Walter

    18. Sep, 2009

    I have observed that some bloggers write only for themselves; they never realized how will it affect the readers. You’re right at your advice above, we’ve got to be careful choosing out titles. The last thing any blogger wants is to lose their readers. :-)

    Reply to this comment

  10. Isaac Yassar

    18. Sep, 2009

    Thanks Rohit, Mr.I, and Walter for your wonderful words. Misleading titles are indeed annoying for readers. Writer who don’t care about their readers tend to create those titles.

    Reply to this comment

  11. Millionaire Acts

    19. Sep, 2009

    Definitely, any reader would get annoyed with misleading titles. The title itself shouls have relevance to the content.

    With the right title and content, you would build trust among your readers and can help you increase your readers as well through word of mouth as long as you are providing informative posts to them.

    Reply to this comment

  12. Jared P Little

    22. Sep, 2009

    Title are very important to SEO and google. Plus if your driving organic traffic all the people from google will see is the title and meta description.

    Yes you need good title that relates to data anything else is bad business. If you want drive more traffic your sould try to have some keyword pharse or part but part of the title.

    Probaly why you see this but doesn’t make sense to do it if it doesn’t realate to the data all that is going to get you is a %100 bounce rate.

    Reply to this comment

  13. Daily Tech

    24. Sep, 2009

    Title of the post should be very catchy as to get the visitors attracted towards it. Title plays the main role i would say

    Reply to this comment

  14. crazy blogger

    25. Sep, 2009

    Inaccurate Titles Will send less traffic from search engines.

    Titles plays a good tole in seo.

    using good titles along with keywords sends us lots of new visitors daily.

    Reply to this comment

  15. Isaac Yassar

    28. Sep, 2009

    Thanks everyone for your kind words. Inaccurate titles truly annoy visitors, they won’t get us to success. On the other hand, accurate titles are good in every way. We need to make sure that our titles are good and accurate then.

    Reply to this comment

  16. Liane YoungBlogger

    29. Sep, 2009

    I bet the only ones who would deliberately use inaccurate titles must have some hidden agenda in mind. As a general rule though, title could mean everything when it comes to sparking interest to readers.

    Reply to this comment

  17. Fazreen

    07. Dec, 2009

    I have seen this type of title most of the time I’m searching for information. But this is what we call a title that can grab reader attention.

    For me, choosing a title is a crucial part. Choosing a title is the last part I do when writing a post.

    Reply to this comment

  18. Isaac Yassar

    08. Dec, 2009

    Hi Liane and Fazreen, thanks for your comments. Well, we have to balance between grabbing attention and not deceiving readers. The perfect balance is surely a good thing, though not easy to accomplish ;-)

    Reply to this comment

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