Your Headline Is Everything
Substack Writers at Work!
Go to your archive and read through the headlines of your posts. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Welcome back.
How many stopped you cold? How many made you desperately want to read? Did any seem like the kind of headline that would hole-in-one cause someone to instantly subscribe?
Don’t be generous.
Really, how many?
I came of age writing for places like The New York Times, where I never wrote a single headline. The editors handled that. It was a muscle I had to build when I came to Substack, and I’m still working on it.
HEADLINES ON SUBSTACK ARE EVERYTHING.
I rarely use all-caps, but this is so important.
If you’re wondering why people aren’t opening your emails or reading or subscribing, it’s (at least partly) your headlines.
I read so many great posts with terrible headlines.
What makes a headline ‘terrible’?
It’s vague, i.e., supposedly meant to spark curiosity, which doesn’t work at all.
It was clearly written by AI for Google’s algorithm, i.e., not written by a human for humans.
What makes a headline ‘great’?
We want human headlines that resonate with humans.
On Substack, we aren’t catering to Google’s algorithm. Most subscribers will likely come from the Substack network.
Plus, in case you haven’t heard, SEO is dead.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t care about SEO, just don’t cater to it.
How do you write a great headline?
Consider these three resources to help with your headlines so readers open your emails and potential subscribers land on your posts and subscribe.
These do three things:
Take SEO into consideration
Balance that against a headline optimization tool that looks at the headline’s intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resonance
Goes through the all-important final step of beta testing it on actual humans
The point is to take your current headline and measure it for
SEO (if you’re interested in that),
human response (as assessed by AI), and
actual human response.
1. Use Claude.
(There’s also ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI. If you hate AI, skip this.)
I like to come up with a headline and then go to Claude with it. Claude is wonderful. He’s polite and never in a bad mood. He admits his mistakes and apologizes. He just wants to do a good job.
I give him my headline and tell him about the post. Then I ask him to give me three SEO-optimized headlines like this: [Enter your idea for a headline].
You can input your post, but some people really don’t like to do that, which is totally valid. See option 2.)
You will need to remind him that an SEO-optimized headline is 70 characters, so if that’s important to you or you’re taking into account the fact that our readers are typically reading our headlines as subject lines, include that.
2. Use the Headline Analyzer here.
This will give you a score based on the (supposed) emotional, intellectual, and spiritual resonance of your headline.
Put the headline you like most into the analyzer.
Test two more and/or variations.
I aim for a score between 20% and 40%. The headline of this post received an 80% rating. That’s the first time that’s ever happened.
3. Go directly to the SW@W HEADLINE HELP chat for suggestions.
Better than any AI tool. Better than any New York Times editor.
Substack Writers at Work’s chat is devoted to giving you headline help. I created it for this reason: Your headlines are everything on Substack.
Go to the Substack Writers at Work Headline Help chat 24/7 here:
Tell them a bit about your post and any potential headlines you might have.
Ask the headline gurus there to offer their suggestions.
Even if a particular headline doesn’t feel like “the one,” you’ll get real suggestions from real humans.
And please join us on the app!
Best subscription I have ever bought. This article alone is worth its weight in gold. This works beautifully. I write about AI daily and as I'm fond of saying AI is a perfect "copilot" to my writing. Why copilot? I don't let AI tell me what to write; instead, I allow it to nudge me, with me as the "pilot" making all key decisions. Thank you Sarah
Sarah, isn't there a risk to running all of our draft posts through AI? Isn't that just letting AI use and steal all of our content?
These AI-generated headlines are often very long and oriented toward SEO rather than being readable. Keep in mind that many people check email on their phones. If the title is long they won't see the whole thing.