- Find one (1) headline that you came across recently and thought it was great. You are to explain why it resonated with you. Please ensure that you base your answers only on topics discussed in class. Meaning, based on course content discussed in class, you are to tie specific elements that we discussed constituted a “good” headline or “elements” of a good headline and how this specific element is referenced in the headline that resonated with you. (6 Marks)
A headline I came across recently and thought was great was on the CBC website. This headline is: “Want to keep your brain sharp? Here are 5 things you can do”.
This stuck out on the page and resonated with me from a variety of elements about what makes a great headline that I learned in class. From all the headlines on the CBC page, this one stuck out to me most because it uses a variety of strategies to grab my attention.
The first element it touched on to make it great was using a specific “pain” point to draw me in. The first sentence asks a direct question—“Want to keep your brain sharp?” This sentence uses the idea that people click on headlines to avoid pain or solve a specific problem. So by asking this question, it’s highlighting a worrying fact that a large amount of the population has worries about their brain health and memory loss. They follow that directly with, “Here are 5 things you can do.” This is grabbing my attention by showing that if I click on this headline, they will show me how I can find solutions to this pain point.
Another element this headline utilizes to draw me in is its clarity. Many other headlines include unnecessary or wordy text that makes it unclear or uninteresting to click on. However, with this headline, it’s simple yet direct and extremely clear on what kind of information I will be finding when I click on it—it’s going to tell me strategies or solutions to keep my brain sharp.
Continuing, another element that I learned in class that makes this headline so great is its use of numbers. Not only does it use a number, but it also uses an odd number. Including “5 things” in the headline makes the content feel more structured. As discussed in class, using odd numbers like 5 tends to feel much more natural and compelling to readers, making the headline much more intriguing than if they used an even number like 10.
The last element I found in this headline that makes it so great is that it works in any context. As discussed in class, you want your headline to make sense to the reader no matter where they are reading it, whether it be on a social media app or in a search result. The reader must be able to understand what the headline is saying without any additional information. It needs to make sense when it stands alone with no further text. So this headline can be easily understood when scrolling quickly on a phone or browsing on a news site; the reader will understand exactly what it’s offering just from the headline itself.
Overall, I found this headline so great and resonated with me because it utilized so many elements I learned in class to intrigue a reader with a headline. It’s attention-grabbing by immediately identifying a pain point, it’s extremely clear on what it’s providing, it uses odd numbers to intrigue the reader, and it works in any context. Together, all these elements came together to produce a great headline.
Why and what I did to modify it: