There’s one thing that gets people to click. They see it in search results. Or they see it on social feeds. And they see it in their email inbox. Pretty much the ONLY thing they see in each place, is your headline.

For many, it’s the first and last thing that inspires them to take action (or skip off to the next option as quickly as possible).

Five times as many people read your headline as opposed to your copy. So said Ogilvy 50+ years ago. And so repeats every single writer in every single article about headlines.

But if you stop to think, this old adage is probably even more true today than it’s ever been.

And when you’re competing against two million other posts published each day, you’re gonna need all the help you can get.

Here’s a cheat sheet to follow to help your content get the credit it deserves.

Try these 3 Fail-Proof Headline Impulses to Kickstart Results

Headline formulas work. That’s why you can find big, awesome lists of ‘em to emulate, copy, or steal. For example, this one from Buffer, or this one from SumoMe.

However, the reason they work is NOT because they’re catchy. But because of the emotional triggers they pull.

Done properly, you can tap into the same fight-or-flight, underlying psychological and borderline primal human desires that have helped us escape extinction for this long. (The impetus for these examples comes from Jon Morrow’s excellent Headline Hacks. You’d be a fool not to download that immediately.)

Here are three impulses to get started mastering today.

Impulse #1. Go Negative

If you ever find yourself with too much happiness, too much optimism or too much positivity, simply switch on the news. Because ten minutes is all it will take to have you crashing down to newfound lows, believing humanity is out to get you and the Armageddon is surely right around the corner.

In The Ultimate Race – to the bottom – popular media pulls all the stops to report on every single possible negative story imaginable.    

That’s why they’re still going strong. Even though the only thing most humans can agree on, is that we hate them.

Most companies can learn a little from this approach. (You know, without all the soul-sucking parts, though.)

Because many are great at talking about the positive things they do. They can help you gain benefit ABC. Or improve performance by DEF. They’re less great at describing how their widget helps you avoid GHI or fix JKL. (I better stop this metaphor before we run out of letters.)

However in a study of over 65,000 titles, Outbrain discovered that headlines with negative superlatives outperform positive ones by 30%, with a 63% higher click through rate.

There are two classic ways to go negative:

• Avoid external threats that other people (or things) might inflict on you.
• Fix internal mistakes you might be making (but aren’t necessarily aware of).

First up, let’s examine threats to your well-being. Starting with myths that might be leading you astray:

‘Myths’ are nothing more than commonly accepted, yet misguided worldviews. They can be internal biases. Or they could simply be shared by most people in your business, industry, or community. 

Attacking ‘common knowledge’ that might be wrong is a powerful way to break through the noise with a counter-narrative. Kinda like this one about serial killers:

Powerful words like ‘serial killer’ indicate how you might already be inflicting harm on yourself (without even knowing it). Here’s where we begin to slip into the internal mistakes that eat people up inside.

Here’s a perfect example:

This headline works because it tackles a difficult problem (landing pages) and explicitly states how you’re already falling victim to it. (This one also has a touch of the ‘cliffhanger’, which we’ll explore in a minute).

Combining the headline angle (focusing on internal mistakes) with things that are widely understood to be difficult, like writing advertisements, are the perfect recipe for creating a headline that stands out and gets clicked.

Impulse #2. Be a Zen Master

Life is hard.

Stress levels are at an all-time high. More are depressed and anxious than ever before. That’s why we willingly pony up $5 bucks for a latte to get us revved up in the morning, only to fork gladly over another $10 bucks for a cold craft beer at your favorite hipster joint eight hours later to come down.

Or we work more hours, burning a metaphorical bonfire in place of the midnight oil, to get more done. Which means we also sleep less, workout less, and spend less time with our families.

All of which leads to? Divorce. Obesity. Heart disease. It ain’t a pretty picture.

But fortunately, there’s an answer.

It promises to be quick, painless, and instant. Men will want to be you, and women will fall head over heels for you.

Simply follow these 3 proven steps, use these life hacks, and use our approach to get rid of your nagging money problems in record time.

Zen headlines promise simplicity. A calming influence. The key to ailing whatever’s bothering your readers. Two tailor-made Zen formats include lists and how-to’s, which are among the most preferred and successful posts online.

The first example borrows a page from the previous section, taking something that’s widely known to be incredibly challenging, yet at the same time offering salvation to manage it easily – without losing your mind.

Everyone wants to improve their conversion rate. The trouble is, it’s often difficult and time-consuming, requiring multi tweaks or changes over a long duration to get everything lined up properly. But this post offers salvation for the biggest pain points involved in agency life (time and output):

One of the most common conversion increasing methods is A/B testing. The interwebs are filled with posts claiming huge boosts off a single A/B test that seemingly only took a few seconds to create and run. However claiming the opposite of that (like how it’s a waste of your time), while still offering a solution, is an excellent way to keep people reading long enough to find out what you mean.

One of the most successful brands today is the infamous Dummies Guide series for learning almost any topic in a short amount of time. Taking a page from that book, you can create spins off this idea by playing with evocative language while still keeping the same idea.

The key to Zen is through fast answers. And nothing says that better than a nice odd-numbered list post with ‘formula’ in the title.

The use of the word ‘try today’ also indicates that these aren’t hugely complex, so you should easily be able to apply these actionable tips in a few minutes (or so it sounds).

Finally, a simplified process for a difficult task is the quintessential Zen headline. Here, you’re getting a ‘step-by-step guide’ for Pinterest.

Impulse #3. Give ‘Em a Cliffhanger

People have expectations. They have a worldview intact and think they know what to expect when walking down the street, scanning through social media or searching for something online. Pattern interruptions break all that. How?

Cue curiosity gaps.

They hint at what’s to come, piquing your interest before stopping just short of the full reveal. They artfully play on our incessant quest for information. Skillfully baiting the hook until all y’all come running. We’d resist if we could. But we can’t. Because it’s hard wired.

Storytelling, across all mediums including television and movies, has been using this approach successfully for years to keep you tuned in and interested enough to sit through a few minutes of mind numbing stupidity without changing the channel. Only to find out if Ross and Rachel ever end up together.

TV shows especially make liberal use of the open loop, using multiple storylines in the same episode to keep people glued to their television longer.

These techniques can be incredibly powerful online. Copyhackers saw a 927% lift in clicks by employing the curiosity gap.

A similar approach was used by Conversion Rate Experts to help Moz (then still SEOmoz) pull in an additional $1 million in revenue, taking their old tried-and-true direct approach and substituting for, “When eBay, Disney, and Marriott need SEO help, here’s what they do…”.

Following in that vein, here’s a close example from this blog that begins to scratch the surface of an effective cliffhanger by using a first-hand experience: 

This is a good first step. However, there’s a surefire way to instantly increase it’s performance: use numbers. For example, right in the first line, it says, “When I tell others my company grew its conversions by 20% month on month…”

If you combined that quantitative evidence, you’d end up with a powerful headline like this one about testing 100 different Facebook ads in a month:

A final good example takes a more direct approach, simply stating that a few important changes coming to Instagram (which plants a seed of interest in people who use that feature and want to see how it’s evolving).

Conclusion

Headline formulas are great. But only if you know why. Simply hitting copy and paste won’t work unless you understand the underlying impulse you’re trying to hit with each.

The most effective impulses are also the ones that affect readers the most. Harping on threats or mistakes create anxiety before ultimately relieving it for them.

Rolling out an easy to follow process to solve a major pain point promises peace in a chaotic, overworked person’s day. And playing on our innate desire of curiosity is an effective technique to lure people in.

There are many more impulses and headline formulas to try. However at the end of the day, these three will never disappoint. They’re the most tried-and-true, backed by countless studies of popular content.

And they go much deeper, harkening back to earlier evolutions of humanity that had to decide on a daily basis whether to stay, fight, or flee.