How to Write Emotional Headlines to Get More Shares by @garrett_moon of @CoSchedule

By Rachel Thompson | #NaNoProMo

May 23
How to Write Emotional Headlines to Get More Shares by @garrett_moon of @CoSchedule via @BadRedheadMedia and @NaNoProMo

Here at CoSchedule, we recently hit over 10 million headlines entered into our Headline Analyzer tool.

That’s a lot of headlines.

With this massive resource, we began wondering what, exactly, made a highly-shared headline so shareable. Could we find a way to predict whether or not a headline would be well-shared?

You may be surprised to hear that we found just such a thing.

When we combined our massive database of headlines with our social sharing analytics and top content reports, we were able to get a unique view of the answer to this question. It all comes down to something called the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. This is the result of a simple test used to provide an actual rating that can be used to judge how well our headline will be received by others.

Write More Emotional Headlines With This Free Power Words Tear Sheet

So, how should you go about writing more emotional headlines?

Start by understanding what constitutes as emotional. Copywriter Karl Stepp offers a great list of highly emotional words that he calls “power words for emotional selling.” As a handy guide,  I have converted them to this handy tear-sheet that you can download right here.

Please visit CoSchedule’s original post to download the tear-sheet. (There’s one teeny tiny easy peasey opt-in form to fill out)

Then, Test Your Headlines With CoSchedule's Free Headline Analyzer

Our free Headline Analyzer will help you:

  1. Use headline types that get the most traction for social shares, traffic, and search engine ranking.
  2. Make sure you have the right word balance to write readable headlines that command attention.
  3. See the best word and character length for search engines like Google and email subject lines, while also seeing how your readers will scan your headlines.

Start by visiting the Headline Analyzer page and entering your headline:

As you scroll down through your analysis, you’ll see previous headlines you wrote for comparison purposes:

The next portion will show you your headline score and the different word types in your headline influencing that score. Here at CoSchedule, we always aim for a 70 or higher:

Scrolling over your results reveals a tip on how to better incorporate each word type into your headline:

Continue to play with headline combinations until you find one that works best. It’s free and you can use it as much as you’d like.

How Do We Know Emotional Headlines Drive More Sales?

We went through a bunch of the headlines in the CoSchedule system and calculated their EMV score. The results were stunning. Posts with a higher emotional value got more shares. Period.

Posts With a Higher Emotional Value Get More Shares

What we found was that on average, posts with a higher EMV were shared more often than posts with a lower EMV score.

Posts with a high number of shares frequently reached an EMV Score of 30 or 40, several points higher than posts with fewer shares.

The results are pretty cool, but how does this score even work?

How Can the Emotional Value of a Headline be Calculated?

Emotional marketing value dates back to the 1960s and 1970s when government research scholar Dr. Hakim Chishti was studying the roots of several languages including Persian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Urdu.

As it goes, his research found that there are basic underlying harmonics in language that are always interpreted with the same “emotional” reactions. Where dictionary-based meanings can be mistaken, the sound tones themselves are always interpreted the same way in our emotional response. This means that emotional language creates a very predictable response, something that can be very advantageous to marketers.

The Emotional Marketing Value is a score that looks to asses how a group of words follows these emotional harmonics, and how likely they are to elicit an emotional response from a reader.

The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer  is a tool based on the research that is made freely available by the Advanced Marketing Institute. Using it can easily provide you with such a score.

Emotional headlines analysis

Can this tool predict shares? Maybe.

The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer is easy to use. Simply copy and paste your headline into the box and it will give you a calculated score of your headline’s EMV Score. Here is the result for the headline of this post:

Write more emotional headlines

The tool provide a more complete explanation of the score:

This score indicates that your headline has a total of 44.44% Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) Words. To put that in perspective, the English language contains approximately 20% EMV words.

And for comparison, most professional copywriters’ headlines will have 30%-40% EMV Words in their headlines, while the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words in headlines.

A perfect score would be 100%, but that is rare unless your headline is less than five words.

Scores are also classified by three emotional types – intellectual, empathetic, and spiritual. The institute provides a few details on what each of these emotional types include.

Three Emotional Headline Types from the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

As an example, the emotional classification for this post was intellectual – a perfect fit for CoSchedule, as we are looking to promote a product that requires reasoning and/or careful evaluation.

After we saw what EMV can do, we thought it would be helpful to build a new headline analyzer. This free tool combines EMV with several other elements we’ve found drive shares, traffic, and SEO results.

Positive/Happy Emotions Do a Better Job Encouraging Shares

Here’s what our top 20 most shared blog posts look like based on emotional sentiment:

  • Ten are positive
  • Nine are neutral
  • Just one is negative

This is a small data set, but it appears the anticipation of benefits drives more shares.

Anticipation is the feeling that we get whenever we find something (like a blog post) that sparks our curiosity. We immediately begin to anticipate the contents of that post and wonder what we might find on the other side. When it comes to anticipation, our emotions will play a big role in how we finally respond to our own curiosity.

Anticipating positive (or happy) events sustains the output of dopamine into the brain’s chemical pathways, and as renowned marketer Neil Patel says “scientific experiments show that most people anticipate future positive events, as opposed to future negative events. In the absence of anxious/depressive psychological disorders, people automatically anticipate happiness more than they do sadness.”

Scientific experiments show that most people anticipate future positive events ...

So, this all begins to add up. Not only do emotions cause us to share, but positive emotions seem to add an additional boost. If we look back to the three emotional types – intellectual, empathetic, and spiritual – we can easily see a distinct trend towards positive emotions and happiness. In short, popular headlines don’t only trigger our emotions, but they help us imagine a positive outcome.

They help us imagine a better life.

Headlines in Action: Some Emotional Headline Makeovers

Let’s take a headful of headlines and look at how we can instantly add or adjust the language to make them more positive and/or more emotional. We will also calculate the precise EMV score for each to see where they fall. See for yourself how EMV can literally transform a headline in an instant.

Sample Headline #1

Sample Headline 1

  • New Headline: Calculating Retail Prices Can Be Hard Work (EMV 42)
  • Why It’s Better: It validates something that the reader is already feeling, and offers a promised (and positive) solution.

Sample Headline #2

Sample Headlines 2

  • New Headline: You Shouldn’t Always Reach Your Goals (EVM 50%)
  • Why It’s Better: It helps the reader feel better about occasionally falling short. They will read and share because it validates them as a person.

Sample Headline #3

Sample Headline 3

  • New Headline: Super Easy Ways To Keep Your Taxes Organized All Year (40%)
  • Why It’s Better: The new headlines promise simple and easy advice. This is certainly more motivational than plan old organization.

Sample Headline #4

Sample Headline 4

  • New Headline: Don’t Worry, Great Men Aren’t Always Born Great (50%)
  • Why It’s Better: Again, there is HOPE for everyone to be great. This is highly emotional and overwhelmingly positive.

Sample Headline #5

Sample Headline 5

  • New Headline: 12 Easy To Follow Tips For Better Business Writing (33%)
  • Why It’s Better: These tips will not only make my business writing better, but they are also easy to follow. It’s a win-win.

Sample Headline #6

Sample Headline 6

  • New Headline: How Do You Know A Small Business Line Of Credit Is For You? (31%)
  • Why It’s Better: Not only is it easier to read, but it attaches itself to the readers own worries and fears.

Sample Headline #7

Sample Headline 7

  • New Headline: 7 Ways You Will Benefit Through Content Curation (38%)
  • Why It’s Better: Replace ‘can’ with ‘will’ adds confidence. Replacing ‘your brand’ with ‘you’ as a personal connection. ‘Through’ adds a level of spiritual emotions.

Pretty cool right? The great news is that some of these headlines didn’t even change all that much in order to become more emotional.

It is also encouraging to see that emotional headlines don’t always equal the overly sensational headlines that we often see on Upworthy or Buzzfeed. We don’t need to oversell our content in order to write a better headline. That much is for sure.

How to Write Emotional Headlines

Copyblogger has published a great list of common “trigger words” that can be used to make emotional headlines. Frequent Copyblogger contributor Jon Morrow has also published a great list of 317 “power words” that can be used to empower your headlines with more emotional impact. These are great resources that will help you add some emotion to your headlines.

Once you know the lingo, you just need to make EMV a regular part of your process. Here is the process I recommend:

1. Write 25 headlines

I recommend that you write 25 different headlines for every post before you made a final selection. This is a process practiced by Upworthy itself and has proven transformational for our own content.

2. Calculate the Emotional Marketing Value for each headline

I find that writes are often surprised about what makes a more emotional headline, so I recommend running each headline through the EMV tool. As you become more experienced this won’t be necessary, but it is a good place to start.

3. Eliminate Anything Below 30 (and Shoot for 40+)

Our data showed that the most shared headlines scored and average EMV between 30 and 40, so this is where you should set your sites. I use 30 as a minimum, but seek to reach 40 or more as often as I can.

4. Squeeze Out a Few More Drops of Gooey Emotion

Once you have a good headline, go back to the ‘power words’ list and see if you can squeeze out a few extra drops of emotion. I usually find that I can gain a few extra points by swapping a few words or simply rearranging their order.

5. Publish, Test, and Evaluate

You just need to pick one and see what happens. We like to repost our contentfrequently on Twitter and will regularly use alternate headlines in place of the original as a way to mix things up, and A/B test our own assumptions. On many of my most popular posts, I have found the the winning headline was actually completely rewritten by the audience. Sometimes, you just never know.

Of course, no matter how high your headline EMV score is there are no guarantees of shares, but at least you will have made every possible effort.

You will still want to continually test your headlines by sharing your content on social media more than once and see what works for your individual audience. Make sure your content marketing, and your headlines, are always driven by results.

Did You Know the Headline Analyzer is Built Into CoSchedule?

Our Headline Analyzer is built directly into CoSchedule, making it easy to test headlines on every piece of content you publish.

Start by creating a new piece of content on your CoSchedule calendar:

Give your content a headline:

In the drop-down menu, click Headline Analyzer to see your headline score. Think you can do better? Try a new headline, and the score will update:

 

Ready to try the Headline Analyzer within the industry’s favorite content marketing calendar platform? Start your free 14-day trial now and see what CoSchedule can do for you.

Start Your Free 14-Day Trial

This post was originally published on July 22. 2014. It was most recently updated and republished on Dec. 22, 2017.

Article reposted with permission from CoSchedule.com (original article).

Thanks, Garrett Moon!

#NaNoProMo Day 23: How to Write Emotional Headlines to Get More Shares by @garrett_moon of @CoSchedule - and be sure to comment to win a signed print book!

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Day 23 Giveaway

CoSchedule is graciously giving away three signed print copies of their bestselling book, 10x Marketing Formula: Your Blueprint for Creating 'Competition-Free Content' That Stands Out and Gets Results by CEO Garrett Moon. Comment below to enter to win! 

Garrett Moon...

CEO & Co-Founder at @CoSchedule. Author of The 10X Marketing Formula Starter, community leader, and content marketing guy.

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About the Author

Rachel Thompson is the author of newly released BadRedhead Media 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge: How to energize your book sales in a month - created to help authors market their book. She is also the author of Broken Places (one of IndieReader's "Best of 2015" top books and 2015 Honorable Mention Winner in the San Francisco Book Festival), and the multi award-winning Broken Pieces, as well as two additional humor books, A Walk In The Snark and Mancode: Exposed. She owns BadRedhead Media, creating effective social media and book marketing campaigns for authors. Her articles appear regularly in The Huffington Post,  IndieReader.com, The San Francisco Book Review (BadRedhead Says…), 12Most.com, BookPromotion.com, and Self-Publishers Monthly. Not just an advocate for sexual abuse survivors, Rachel is the creator and founder of the hashtag phenomenon #MondayBlogs and two live Twitter chats: #BookMarketingChat (co-hosted with TheRuralVA, Emilie Rabitoy) and #SexAbuseChat, co-hosted with C. Streetlights and Judith Staff. She hates walks in the rain, running out of coffee, and coconut. She lives in California with her family.

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Leave a Comment:

(14) comments

Claire Gem May 23, 2018

Fascinating stuff! I’m def going to use this handy little tool. Thanks so much!

Reply
Alex Kourvo May 23, 2018

This is amazing! I struggle with headlines, especially for my monthly newsletter. Would I get more opens if I wrote better subject lines? I think so!

Reply
Cynthia Herron May 23, 2018

What great tips! I’ve used the free version of this tool before – very handy!

I wish I had time to try 25 different headlines before I post! *gasp*

Reply
D.B. Moone May 23, 2018

Rachel & Garrett, not to be self-effacing but, “This is an Awesome Post!” Ironically, I received a constructive edit of my website and Twitter platform yesterday that included several recommendations that I intend to incorporate in my website and other social media platforms. I have a lot of work ahead of me. Did I say I’m going to be busy? As I was reading this post, I confess that I clicked on one link after another, to absorb as much useful and helpful information as I could. Garret’s guest post was everything I need to transform my website into what I want it to be as a Book Reviewer and future Author. I’ve never spent so much time reading a #NaNoProMo guest blog. I signed-up for the newsletters and will be following the CoSchedule Blog. Yes, “This is an Awesome Post.”

Reply
Dana Lemaster May 23, 2018

Rachel and Garrett, thanks for this post. I appreciated the examples showing how a headline can be improved. They helped me get a firmer grasp of the concepts and also made me think about how I can improve my own work.

Reply
Connie Nesbary May 23, 2018

This tool is fascinating and so helpful. I so appreciate your wisdom on the chat tonight as well. I would benefit greatly from a copy of your book — I’m ready to start on this path. Thank you!

Reply
Daphne May 23, 2018

I love using this tool! It’s so easy! These examples were great for even more ideas on better headlines.

Reply
Jennifer May 23, 2018

OH MY WORD!!!! I would love this!!!!!!!!! Especially as I write about emotional topics most of the time – linking with domestic abuse. X

Reply
Tom May 23, 2018

Great chat tonight.

Reply
Carolyn Astfalk May 24, 2018

I like seeing the examples of what resonates and getting a sense of why, which I think can help me in writing headlines. Although writing 25 test headlines for every one used? I’m lucky if I have to write the post and put a single title on it. LOL Thanks.

Reply
Donna May 24, 2018

Headlines are difficult to write, particularly when most of your content are book reviews. I try to come up with 10 headlines which I switch out when posting to social media.

Reply
Lisa @ The Meaning of Me May 24, 2018

This is really interesting. Thanks for the tips and ideas here!

Reply
Kelly Wilson May 25, 2018

Coschedule remains one of my favorite tools of all time. I had not heard about the EMV tool – I look forward to using that in my headline practice!

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