Think twice next time you're tempted to use a pun in your article's headline
Coming up with a great headline for a piece you've invested a lot of time and effort in can sometimes be a bigger challenge than anticipated, especially since headlines often determine whether readers click on the story or not - and what catches people's eye on the website might not do so on Facebook or Twitter.
As Kurt Gessler, deputy editor for digital news at the Chicago Tribune, points out in this post on MediaShift, analytics tools can help journalists leverage real-time data to A/B test headlines, but these are more valuable for headlines that have already been written in a clear and engaging manner.
Among his 18 writing tips, Gessler advises steering clear from punny headlines, which might backfire due to language barriers or deflect attention from the story itself, providing the key details in the first few words, and employing the curiosity gap without becoming click-baity.
He also outlines examples of Chicago Tribune headlines before and after they were adjusted using these guidelines, and explains how the changes got more readers to click on stories on the homepage.
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