Everyone knows the importance of headlines.
A good headline can get people to click on your content, read it, and share it with their friends, which helps your brand gain exposure.
A bad headline, on the other hand, can cause people to scroll right past your article, or even worse, spark controversy.
A bad headline in the New York Times this past summer prompted people to tweet using the hashtag #CancelNYT, which started trending. You definitely don’t want this to happen to your business, so it’s important to choose your headlines wisely.
Part of crafting great headlines that people click on is staying on top of trends and learning what works and what doesn’t.
If you want to increase your post engagement, especially on Facebook, then here are the 18 headlines you should avoid heading into 2020.
18 phrases to avoid in your Facebook headlines
Buzzsumo analyzed 100 million headlines to determine which ones drive the most engagement on Facebook. According to their data, these popular phrases drive the least engagement out of all of the ones they looked at.
Here’s the full list of all 18 phrases:
- Control of your
- On a budget
- Your own business
- Work for you
- The introduction of
- What’s new in
- Could you be
- The effect of
- X simple tips
- Best for you
- The nature of
- How to move
- How much will
- The risks of
- Into the future
- Back to normal
- You should use
- Don’t forget to
These phrases appear to be unrelated and hard to draw any real conclusions from. But when you compare them to the best-performing headlines, it becomes clear why they didn’t drive engagement on Facebook.
How do these phrases compare to the best-performing headlines?
According to Buzzsumo, the best-performing headlines of the year were all emotional. They included phrases such as:
- Tears of joy
- Give you goosebumps
- Is too cute
- Shocked to see
- Can’t stop laughing
Emotional and even sensational headlines seem to perform better on Facebook than informative ones. So if you’re pushing educational content on the platform and not human interest stories, you’ll have to find unique ways to title your articles to get clicks.
Top-performing phrases like “this is why” and “the reason is” could help you position informative content in a way that engages readers.
But make sure that you don’t craft headlines that are too over-the-top. In 2017, Facebook announced that it would demote content with sensational headlines that exaggerate the details of the story.
So choosing the right headlines for Facebook is definitely a balancing act between appealing to people’s emotions and accurately reflecting the details of your content.
What else can marketers learn from this list?
Another thing that we can learn from this list of the worst-performing headlines is the importance of context.
One of the phrases on the list, “on a budget,” is actually a top-performer on Pinterest. Pinterest is a place where people go for money-saving tips and DIY content, so it makes sense that the phrase did well there.
“On a budget” didn’t drive the same level of engagement on Facebook, which reveals some things about Facebook users. They’re probably not as budget-conscious as people on Pinterest, and are less interested in DIY content overall.
That’s why it’s important to understand what type of content and messaging performs well on each social channel.
Before you make a post on social media, you should do some research to understand the audience on that particular platform. And you shouldn’t use the same boilerplate headline on all of your social channels, or else you’ll see poor engagement across the board.
If you put a little extra time into understanding your audience and keeping up with social media trends, then you’ll be able boost engagement and revenue for your business.