Headline-Hacks-12-12-2011.pdf

In college, an English professor said something that changed my life.

"The best writers are the best thieves," he said. "Shakespeare stole his plots from Greek

and Roman plays. Thomas Jefferson practically plagiarized the Declaration of

Independence from John Locke. Oscar Wilde stole from... well... everyone. And so

should you."

I was stunned. From kindergarten on up, we're all taught that stealing the ideas of others

is wrong, and we are threatened with everything from failing grades to expulsion from

school for doing it.

Yet, here was a college professor (with tenure, I'm sure), telling everyone that the key to

great writing is blatant and unrepentant theft. And I had to admit, he had some pretty

solid examples.

"Can it possibly be true?" I thought. "Could I really be hurting my writing by trying to be

original?"

My answer, three years later, as a professional writer and Associate Editor of one of the

most popular blogs in the world:

Yup.

The truth about being a "serious" writer

One of the worst ways you can torture yourself as a writer is to believe everything you do

has to be original. Yes, it's possible, but you'll get comparatively little done, and the

continuous pressure will give you a nervous breakdown.

It's far, far better to steal. No, you shouldn't violate copyrights or willfully claim someone

else's work as your own, but the writers who make it in this business -- and yes, writing is

a business -- are the ones who watch what's working for everyone else and then creatively

adapt it for their own.

It's not because they're lazy. It's because they're busy.

If you write for any serious purpose, you learn very quickly that you can't afford to spend

months or years dreaming up a daring new approach for everything you write. No one has

that kind of discipline. The only way to survive is to write quickly, and the only way to do

that is to take a page from the playbook of guys like Shakespeare, Jefferson, and Wilde --

copying from others not because you lack genius, but because true genius is clothed in the

ideas of others.

Headlines are no exception

None of those irresistible headlines you see on the covers of Cosmopolitan Magazine and

The National Enquirer are new. The majority of them are more than 50 years old,

written by great direct response copywriters like Eugene Schwartz and Claude Hopkins.

They might change the wording around or modernize the language, but the ideas are

essentially the same, rehashed over and over again by every popular magazine, newspaper,

and blog in the world.

And do their readers complain? No.

I've received a lot of complaint letters about the content of the articles I've written, but no

one has criticized me for failing to develop an original headline. On the contrary, I've

received hundreds of complements on my headlines from people who thought I created

them from scratch. But I didn't. I "stole" them, just like every other popular writer.

If you look carefully at any great headline, you can distill it down to a fill-in - the - blank

"template" that works for almost every topic in any niche. The best writers I know have

thousands of them either saved to a file on their computers or floating around in their

heads, where they can reference them at a moment’s notice to develop a winning headline

of their own.

A simple shortcut you can apply immediately

It's a simple shortcut, and that's why I call these templates "Headline Hacks." Just as "life

hacks" are shortcuts for dealing with the complexity of life, these Headline Hacks will

allow you to bypass the years of study and failure required to write great headlines.

It's not because they're "magical." It's because they're based on headlines that have

worked time and time again for some of the most popular publications in the world.

Use them.

Here's what I recommend:

Read through the whole report, stopping at every Headline Hack to write down a

few examples of your own. By the time you're finished, you should have at least 52

headlines you can use in your articles or blog posts.

Write at least one article per week that uses one of your new headlines. You can

use them in any order you like, but consciously commit yourself to at least one per

week. With 52 headlines, your collection should last you an entire year.

At least once a month, scan through the Headline Hacks again. The point of

doing this is to allow the examples to sink into your subconscious. Your brain will

internalize them, and you'll find great headlines popping into your head when you

least expect it.

Of all the ways you can improve your blog, this one is by far the easiest. I mean, what

could possibly be easier than filling in the blank?

No, it won't put you in the Technorati 100 (at least, not by itself), but you will see an

increase in traffic. More importantly, you'll be learning one of the most important skills

any blogger can master: making your readership curious.

The more curious your headlines make people, the more they'll read your posts. The

more they read your posts, the better your chance of building a relationship with them.

The more relationships you have, the more influential you become in your niche.

It's the same process, regardless of whether you have 100,000 subscribers or you started

your blog yesterday. And it all begins with the headline.

So, what are you waiting for?

Scroll down, and check out the goods. :-)

Best regards,

Jon Morrow

PS: Don't miss the little bonus on the last page.

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