Like any other social media platform, LinkedIn provides great opportunities for businesses to spread the word about themselves and gain valuable connections with other similar companies. At the same time, LinkedIn, which is specifically a professional platform, helps you establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
One of the most effective ways for using LinkedIn for promotion is posting, of course. That’s why so many marketers and business owners use LinkedIn or LinkedIn automation tools to post valuable blog posts and articles. However, it’s difficult to stand out of the crowd on LinkedIn, so your headlines need to be particularly good. Hence, here are the ten tips on writing eye-catching but not clickbait headlines for LinkedIn posts.
1 Ask Unusual Questions
One of the easiest ways to hook a reader and make them click the headline to check out the article itself is by asking unusual questions. In other words, you need to word your headlines as questions rather than simply statements that serve as titles. For such headlines, you can use the 5Ws and 1H (What, Who, Where, When, Why, and How) or you can just word your headlines as yes/no questions.
What such headlines do is that they tease a small piece of information to your potential readers and urge them to read on to find out more about the topic. Such headlines are also good for piquing your audience’s curiosity by asking them a question they would have never thought about before.
2 Use Descriptive Language
This is something you need to do all the time with your headlines rather than only using the technique for some of your titles. Using descriptive language is essential for your titles to catch your potential reader’s eye. They need to get a vivid picture of what you are talking about or at least get some kind of impression.
Think about it this way. Before your readers can see the beautiful images, videos, or infographics inside your article, they will first read the headline of this article. For images, you can use a special tool like Pixelixe Studio which has a graphic creation tool that allows you to create images for social media. Likewise, for headlines, you can use Grammarly or Hemingway Editor to correct errors.
3 Include Numbers and Symbols
An effective and very popular technique you can use is including numbers and symbols in your headlines. You can do this both for the headlines in the form of questions and those that are just statements. Moreover, numbers are notoriously great for listicles. However, they can also be used for guides (like this one) that have a number of tips in them.
Symbols, on the other hand, are a bit trickier. To put it simply, these are punctuation marks that you can use to spice up your headlines. A question mark is necessary for question headlines while commas are necessary when you are listing multiple items in your headlines. You can also use exclamation marks, dashes, colons, semicolons, quotation marks, ellipsis points, and brackets depending on the occasion.
4 Point Out the Article’s Format
While it may sound like a weird tip, it becomes all the more obvious once you think about it a bit. LinkedIn posts aren’t just short blog posts about whatever – they can be of so many different formats. You could be writing listicles, tutorials, guides, reviews, case studies, and so on. Some of these can be easily explained in the headline.
For example, you could have a post titled “The Ultimate Guide to Gluten-Free Restaurants in Sacramento” which would directly signal to potential readers that it is, as the name suggests, an extensive guide on the topic. It’s a great way to attract readers who want specifically a guide and won’t be disappointed in the length of your content.
5 Remember About Keywords
Much like point #2, this is a tip on writing all your headlines, irrespective of the way you format them. Keywords are essential for search engine optimization, but they are also necessary for attracting your readers’ attention. Just like other elements listed above (numbers and symbols, descriptive words), keywords are eye-catching in their own right.
When you point out the article’s format in its title (e.g. using “guide” in the headline), you are attracting a certain type of readers. Likewise, when you use particular keywords (e.g. “gluten-free fast food” or “gluten-free cafes”), you are also attracting readers only looking for those particular keywords as well as those who just realized they were looking for them. In other words, you are targeting a specific audience that will enjoy your content.
6 Eliminate Unnecessary Words
One thing many marketers and business owners (and even experienced writers) forget about is that headlines need to be as concise as possible. Making your headline extremely long doesn’t immediately mean it will be eye-catching and will attract many readers. On the contrary, it could make potential readers avoid or ignore your article.
There is also a very practical reason for making your headline shorter by eliminating unnecessary words. When your article comes up in searches, not all search engines will show its headline in full length and will instead cut off the title. This is why you should make it shorter – to ensure that readers can see it in full.
7 Create A Sense of Urgency
By far one of the most effective ways to make a reader click on your headline and read your LinkedIn post is by creating a sense of urgency. Urgency makes your readers want to check out your post immediately because you are offering something they simply can’t miss out on.
Indeed, the fear of missing out is the driving factor here. However, you can also try to create a limited offer and add information about it to your headline. This will also create urgency, though it will be in a way directly related to your offer within your post.
8 Test Headlines on Other Platforms
If you are unsure whether your headlines are good or not, it’s a good idea to test them out before you start posting on LinkedIn. Testing headlines on other platforms allows you to see whether they work on websites similar to LinkedIn (for example, Facebook).
This is especially true if your primary audience consists of largely the same people on both platforms. If they respond well on one platform, they will likely respond well on LinkedIn. It’s as simple as that.
9 Give Out Insider Information
Much like urgency, exclusivity is a great tool for making your headline more effective. When you make your content exclusive, you are pretty much providing extremely valuable information to your audience which they can’t just miss out on.
A good way to signal that your post contains exclusive information is by giving out insider information in the title. You don’t need to give out everything just yet, but at least a hint of what’s to come within your post is enough to make potential readers click on your headline.
10 Write Multiple Headlines at A Time
Last but not least, instead of only writing a single headline for a single post you create, try to write multiple headlines at a time. By having several options to choose from, it will be easier to select the best one and go with it.
Often times writers settle for the first thing they came up with either because of laziness or because they can’t think of anything else. Instead, teach yourself to come up with as many ideas as possible and then play around with them until you find the best fit for your LinkedIn post. In case, if you lack some creativity in writing content, various ai generation tools may be helpful for you.
Final Thoughts
All in all, there is a fine line between making your headlines sound like clickbait and keeping them exciting and eye-catching to your potential readers. If you understand where this line is, you will be able to keep your headlines interesting while avoiding crossing into the grounds of clickbait. Use this guide to help you create headlines for your LinkedIn posts that will both attract and hook readers.