{"id":50,"date":"2007-01-31T00:30:54","date_gmt":"2007-01-31T05:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/case-study-how-a-headline-made-the-difference-between-100-and-5000-visits\/"},"modified":"2013-08-12T14:08:23","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T22:08:23","slug":"case-study-how-a-headline-made-the-difference-between-100-and-5000-visits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/case-study-how-a-headline-made-the-difference-between-100-and-5000-visits\/","title":{"rendered":"Case Study: How a Headline Made the Difference Between 100 and 5000 Visits"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

<\/p>\n

Want to attract thousands of visitors? If you are a blogger struggling to succeed on the social sites, this post is a must read.<\/p>\n

Up until three days ago I hadn’t been able to get much traffic from any of the social sites (Digg, Reddit, StumbleUp, etc.). I’d been frequently submitting to all of them but nothing stuck. I wasn’t sure why. I knew my content was good, but for some reason people weren’t going for it. I finally made a break through, and I’ll tell you exactly how it happened.<\/p>\n

The Stats<\/h2>\n

On Friday, January 26, I wrote a post titled “The Two Types of Cognition”. I posted it to Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Del.icio.us and attracted a grand total of 100 visitors in the next two days.<\/p>\n

The average time spend on the post (6:11) was great, so I knew the people who read it liked it. The problem was people weren’t seeing it.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, my friend Greg came by and told me he liked the post and that I should try to promote it. This planted the seed of curiosity. On Sunday I decided to make an effort to promote the article.<\/p>\n

I realized that my original headline sucked. I’m new to copywriting, so I normally want to use headlines as labels. ‘The Two Types of Cognition’ is a perfect description of the post and it includes the main keyword, but it doesn’t give the reader any incentive.<\/p>\n

My breakthrough was galvanized by the discovery of Steve Olson<\/a>‘s post, “How This Blog Attracted 100,000 Visitors in the First 30 Days<\/a>“. Through Steve’s post I discovered “5 of Your Headlines Remixed<\/a>” by Brian Clark<\/a>. If you want traffic READ THIS POST.<\/p>\n

After reading Brian’s article and some of the other links from Steve’s post I resolved to concoct a new headline and resubmit to the social sites.<\/p>\n

I came up with “Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence<\/a>“. A bit more provocative isn’t it? I submitted to all the same sites, made it up to the second page of Reddit and got a few del.icio.us tags and stumbles. Reddit brought in some good traffic, but it really took off with StumbleUpon.<\/p>\n

As of this moment that article has attracted 4,930 unique views. Not bad for a site that normally averages a couple hundred visitors a day. As a bonus, people started stumbling one of my other pages<\/a>, leading to even more traffic.<\/p>\n

Here is a chart depicting how rewriting a single headline has affected this site’s traffic.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I didn’t write this post to brag. Many other people attract many more visitors over the social sites everyday. I wanted to point out that content is not always the biggest issue. The EXACT SAME ARTICLE had drastically different results all because of a headline. And it isn’t even that tough. Read the posts I linked to earlier, take the lessons to heart, and start putting a lot more effort into your headlines and opening paragraphs.<\/p>\n

Don’t let your great content go to waste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how writing a more provocative headline lead to an enormous increase in social media traffic. 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