Susan, I hope your article is read widely and truly digested for the wise advice you are giving.

I work hard on titles, they still baffle and frustrate me. It’s so hard to write good headlines, it can almost be harder than writing a good story. But it’s worth the effort…I 100% know I can write a better headline today than one year ago, and I want to keep learning. I’ll toss and turn over a headline for hours.

Here’s what I think people don’t realize:

When medium boosts or “distributes” as it used to, it’s just showing the headline with the preview. If that headline doesn’t grab their attention, a boost means nothing. Yes, once they are in the story, we better keep their attention. So the quality of the writing does matter.

But I’m with you.

I read a lot of well crafted stories.. But their headline was literally thrown on the article or so it felt…it doesn’t do the article any justice. It’s so unfortunate.

When I anonymously asked in my poll last year who worked at length on their headlines, I wasn’t surprised to see: over 70% of the writers admitted to not putting that much effort into them.
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Excellent advice Suze—thanks for saying what needed to be said!!