Titles

I hate blog titles.

Short ones. Long ones. Funny ones. Sad ones. Clever ones. Boring ones. List ones. Question ones. Poignant ones. Descriptive ones. Secretive ones.

I hate them all.

Okay, so I know that blog post titles are necessary for SEO (although this is debatable when the titles are ‘clever’) and they are supposed to give you a quick detail of what you can expect in the post…rarely do I find the title does the post justice. Or worse, the title is good and the post is not! (we’ve all seen this one!) Because of the short comings of titles, I would much prefer to just title my blog post with one word, rather than try and explain my detailed thoughts in just 3-10 words…

For example, on Thursday I wrote a post entitled “What is the cost of being fake?” which talked about the price of failing to be authentic in business. I wrote this title because that is the status quo – you are expected to come up with a catchy few word title that tells a bit about the post. But were I to ignore what should be and have done it my way, the post would have simply been titled. “Authenticity”. It gets the point across that it is going to be about authenticity but doesn’t skew your opinion with more text that tries to explain it. You have to click to learn more. Which gave me an idea…

I am giving up traditional blog post titles and instead, moving to just one word that sums up the entire post. I am moving away from what I “should” do, and trying it my way. Is it possible that it will fail? Sure. Is it possible that I will revolutionize the way that blog posts are titled? Probably not, but I am willing to try anyway.

So starting today, and for the next 4 weeks, I will be writing blog post titles with only one word, studying how it affects my readership and responses and then report back on my results.

What do you think about blog titles?

Are you willing to break the status quo and try the one word title movement with me?

Related posts:

1. Titles (reviewed)
2. 30-minutes
3. I’d like to my triple twitter traffic, Julien, but I’m not sure I got the answer as to how…