Improve Your Headline Writing with Twitter


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This is going to be a quickie. But a simple way to improve your headline skills is to use Twitter.

Tighten Your Writing
Just in general, Twitter forces an economy of words second only, perhaps, to writing billboards…where the rule of thumb is to get your idea across in 7 words or less. Twitter give you a little more leeway, with 140 characters or less. Do your best to get your idea across to your followers without resorting to “texting” abbreviations, like “u” for “you” or replacing “to,” “too,” with the number “2.” Use whole words and express complete thoughts.

It’s not quite as easy as it sounds.

The Twitter Split Test
But you can use Twitter in another way, too…as a split-testing tool. Write an entry on your blog. Write on lead-in that will drive traffic to your blog. Give yourself three or four hours, and post a link to the same post with a new lead-in. Most of your followers won’t mind, because most people aren’t on all day long, and don’t check their stream back more than a few hours.

Now, if you use bit.ly as your URL shortener, you can see exactly how many people clicked through each link to your article. If 20 people clicked through your first link, and 50 clicked through to your second, you know that your second lead-in was stronger.

Of course, there are other variables that can be at play…time of day, day of week…the actual relevance of the post to your followers…but if you approach all for your tweets with this perspective, in an attempt to strengthen your your writing, then you will be able to noticeably tighten your copy, and develop a knack for better headlines.

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