One popular headline writing technique on the market involves inserting famous people’s names into the headlines.
For example:
- Richard Branson’s Guide to Surviving an Amish Bathhouse
- The Most Controversial Feng Shui Designs by Barry Manilow
- 1,283 Cheap and Vaguely Fun Lessons You Can Learn from Tiger Woods about Losing
- Louis CK on How to Stack Money unto the Lord
The thought is you leverage the famous person’s name for attention. Usually works pretty well.
Naturally, this technique does not work when the person isn’t famous. Gasper Hicks might be a great guy, but his guide to how search engines work will be worthless.
But it also fails when your subject is only parochially famous. Meaning, her name might mean something to people in New Zealand, but not in South Africa or Cleveland.
Or her name is only meaningful to people who work in a certain industry like fashion, carpentry, or telecommunications.
This happens a lot in podcast titles that involve interviews. The host will interview someone who’s doing good work, but not well-known outside a very small section of the universe.
But it occurs in articles, too.
Thus, if the focus of your article or podcast is a minor star, focus on the benefits, particularly the most powerful desire of the reader or listener.
Speaking of podcasts, have you listened to my new podcast Rough Draft?
Yes, it’s a great headline technique..
Brutal, but true. Authority is specific 🙂
I like to slip in a reference to the D-man.
Such as, “How Demian Farnworth Taught Me (yes, ME) to Write a Damn Good Sentence”
Works like a charm! Like E.F. Hutton. When Demian talks, people listen.
Hot topic, Demian. I´m working right now on a post which has a famous people’s name in its headline.
I´m not sure if it´s a good , or a bad thing… Because this famous person is a bit choleric and maybe he send me some guys to break my fingers? 😀 I thought to add [Unofficial] right next to his name….
I wrote a blog post about the books and TV series “Outlander” and mentioned the author, Diana Gabaldon. It was my most successful post ever. Over 28,000 hits on my site, and Diana Gabaldon even shared my post on her Facebook page. But guess what. The success is transitory. Once the name recognition and novelty of the post dies down, then what? I could drop famous people’s names in my blog headlines, but generally I prefer to focus on authentic, personal content that I hope will resonate with others!
And yes, I’ve listened to your podcast “Rough Draft” and think it rocks.