Suppose you decide to write an article on a topic of your choice. You labour away for weeks researching, writing, and editing the article, only to re-write it again and again until you get it just right. You know the article will be very beneficial to your readers as it will help them solve a pressing problem. Just as important, it will help you further build your brand and business. Yet when you check to see how many people have read it, you are disappointed with the trifling number of page hits.

What went wrong? Was there not enough traffic to the website? You dig around and you discover that the root of the problem is not a lack of traffic or promotion but an uninspiring title. Your painstakingly written article is undermined by a title that forms less than one percent of your article.

That little scenario plays out every day in the world of writing: an informative, helpful, and well-written piece fails, not on the strength and merit of its content but on the weakness  of its title.

Writing good titles isn’t as hard to write as most people think. Sure, there are titles that require clever word plays, humour, or capture the essence of the writing in just one phrase. Some examples include, Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung, The Cathedral And The Bazaar, The Tipping Point, The Long Tail, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Good To Great, In Search of Excellence, What To Expect When Expecting.

There are  templates that you can use to significantly and instantly add a level of excitement to any title. Whether you are writing an article, a book, or a sales letter here are 6 title templates you can use to make your piece more appealing.

1. How to Use ‘How’ To Magnetize Your Titles

People read for entertainment. But they also read for education. In particular, they read to solve the problems that they are encountering in life; those problems that keep them up at night.

Hence, one of the quickest ways to improve the appeal of your article and ensure that more of your target audience reads it, is by positioning your article as a how-to guide for solving a particular problem. Such positioning can be achieved easily by starting your article’s title with How to xyz.

So rather than saying:

- Useful Tips for Bridge Building

- Lose 5 Kilos in 10 Weeks

- Getting Customers to ‘Imagine This’ Without Asking Them to ‘Imagine This’

- Poison Darts and the Development of Modern Anesthetics

- Converting Visitors into Paying Customers

Say:

- How to Build a Better Bridge

- How to Lose 5 Kilos in 10 Weeks

- How to Get Customers to ‘Imagine This’ Without Asking Them to ‘Imagine This’

- How Poison Darts Spurred the Development of Modern Anesthetics

- How to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers

As you can see, just about any title can easily be made more captivating and interesting by the simple addition of the word how.

Although very useful and effective, how is all but one tool in manufacturing engaging titles.

2. The Art of Writing a Captivating Title

Another way to create catchier titles is to start your titles with the phrase The art of.

-The Art of Selling

-The Art of War

-The Art of Conversation

Famous blogger, Guy Kawasaki, swears by this technique. As he once said in an interview, “The two best words to start a headline are Art Of – and if you just stuck to that formula, you would probably do better than most people.”

3. Using Lists to Craft a Catchier Titles

The third way to create a catchy title is by using specific numbers in your titles/headlines. Specificity adds credibility to your title and thus makes the article more appealing. Also, it makes your writing appear more consumable and bite sized. This works especially well if you have a list of loosely connected items you want to discuss.

- 31 Timeless Sayings To Help You Grow Your Blog & Business

- 5 Quick Ways to Build More Muscle

- 10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Save Money on Your Grocery Bill

- 3 Secrets to Healthy, Shiny, Blemish-Free Skin

4. The Secret to Creating Better Titles

Another technique is to start with the words the secret to, which evokes curiosity - one of the most powerful ways to attract attention.

- The Secret to Obama’s Effortless Style

- The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

- The Secret to Getting More Site Visitors

- The Secret to Happiness

5. The Truth about Good Title Creation

In a similar vain to the secret to, using the truth about can also greatly increase the appeal of your article.

- The Truth about Diet Pills

- The Truth about 2012

- The Truth about Laser Hair Removal

6. What x and y Have in Common?

Another way to create a captivating title is to incorporate the power of mystery into the title. One of the best ways to achieve this is by picking out two entities that are related in some way pertinent to your article and stating that in the title.

Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt have used this technique to great effect in creating captivating titles for their international bestselling books Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics. Here are some of their chapter titles:

- What Do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?

- What Do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo Have in Common?

- How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?

- How Is a Street Prostitute Like a Department-Store Santa?

Though a bit harder to incorporate, the technique is very effective in evoking human curiosity and getting people to read your article.

Summary

In summary, using these templates you can magnetise even the most banal of titles. So next time you have to come up with a catchy title run through the following list to see if one of these templates can be used.

1.    How to Xyz

2.    The Art of Xyz

3.    3 Ways to Xyz

4.    The Secret to Xyz

5.    The Truth about Xyz

6.    What X and Y Have in Common