Simply put, the single most effective thing to gaining the attention of individuals in a world of information overload is writing compelling titles. While your content may not be as exciting as your title, it’s going to be difficult to develop a massive following if you don’t excite, taunt, tease, challenge, educate, or entertain your followers. So stop being boring! Here are 10 titles that will reach out of your fans’ computer screen and virtually smack them in the face (in a nice way of course)!

Think And Grow Rich

Not only is this one of my favorite books of all-time, but the title is also one of the most successful ones ever written. It makes a compelling offer: think and you can become rich. Is there anything else that you need to do? Who knows, but if all I need to ever do is think in order to become rich, I definitely need to find out what I need to be thinking! The Napoleon Hill book has become one of the most sold books ever and while it’s also the original self-help book, it’s also one of the best titles ever written.
The lesson learned from this title is pretty simple: offer people a simple solution (thinking) for creating dramatic change (becoming rich).

The 4-Hour Workweek

I honestly put this book down halfway through because I felt like Tim Ferris was teaching me how to skip class in high school, something that I could just as easily write a book on. However Tim has implemented a formula for success. In addition to extensively testing numerous titles, something that is mandatory for any successful marketers, he built a book which promises something which most people would consider unimaginable.
Be warned though: using this technique is guaranteed to get peoples’ attention, but if you don’t follow it up with quality content, you are going to end up with instant buyers remorse.
The lesson learned here is clear though: simply offer something that most people could only dream of.

WATCH: Man Stops Speeding Train With Bare Hands!

This is something that I regularly use to drive traffic to this site. While it’s somewhat of a psychological trick, telling people do do things (click, watch, click, etc) is more likely to result in that action taking place. I’m not sure where I read it, but the word “STOP!” has a dramatic effect on people. In addition to seeing stop signs, the word is typically used to let people know there is something important they need to pay attention to. It also results in an action.
Lesson: by occasionally using action words to tell the user what action to take, you can actually drive more instances of that action.

How To Win Friends And Influence People

This is another killer book. This Dale Carnegie classic offered valuable insight for understanding the social dynamics of success. It also promised the reader two valuable skills: winning friends and influencing people. Any title that gives you two compelling things for the price of one is always guaranteed to get peoples’ attention.

7 Proven Techniques To Skyrocket Sales

List articles, like this one, always tend to perform well. If you can give people small bits of “content candy” that is easy and quick to digest, you’ll always be sure to do well. Additionally, not only do you want a list of things, but you clearly want a list of things that are compelling to the group of people you are targeting. By offering your readers (fans) a list of items that they can quickly consumer, you’re practically guaranteed to get people to click, comment, or like.

The Scott Pilgrim Handbook To Facebook Marketing

While Scott Pilgrim may be one of the best selling characters among Amazon books right now, there are plenty of other popular books that people recognize. The main strategy used here is offering a recognizable super hero or expert’s name and associating it with something they’d either be good at or something that seems completely unrelated (see our article on “What Hotel Towels Can Teach You About Facebook Fans“).

WARNING: This Secret Sales Technique Is Not For The Faint Of Heart

Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich

I use this title because it’s the name of a book by David Garfinkel which is filled with hundreds of titles that you can use to provoke your fans, followers, readers, and anybody else that visits your site or Facebook Page. I’ve used the book personally to find titles that generate results. While there are tons of resources, like “swipe files” (Google it), for discovering titles, this books is the best one I’ve found yet that serves as an excellent companion when creating titles. Just like the other titles, this title offers the reader something insanely compelling. It’s pretty similar to “Think And Grow Rich” to be honest.

Speak Spanish Like A Diplomat

While I’ve never used this title personally, I grabbed this one from the book I just mentioned and I found it to be quite compelling. It offers the reader the opportunity to learn how to perform a skill just like the experts. While I doubt the title “Perform Surgery Like A Surgeon” isn’t going to be your best performing article, an article such as “Crush Sales Like True Closers” would probably perform decently. I’m sure you can brainstorm plenty of other titles (speaking of which, please feel free to post some in the comments).

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

I’m giving away my own secrets this one. This title has helped me drive more than 2 million people to this site. The title was also followed by an extremely compelling article that provided detailed instructions on how users can protect themselves. The combination of a broad audience (Facebook users) with instructions on how to quickly make the user safer (security ranks high in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) provided explosive results. You can use this title as well by just filling in the blanks: “10 ______________ Every ______________ Should Know”, replacing the first blank with some sort of desirable piece of information (sales techniques, safety rules, etc) and the target market (Facebook users, gamers, mothers, brilliant students, etc).

Don’t Become The Boy Who Cried Wolf!

These titles can be extremely powerful but they can also kill your brand overnight. The reason is that if you over-promise something and under-deliver, the reader will have the feeling of buyers remorse, even if they got the content for free. You must continuously test new ways to improve your skills and then share those techniques with others. If you aren’t improving, then you aren’t going to be providing information which is valuable. Seriously, I can’t emphasize this enough. Providing junk content will kill any hope you have for being successful.

Master Facebook Marketing

If you haven’t yet tried out Facebook ads, you can get $25 in ad credits for free by entering the ad coupon code “afblog-sept2010” next time you create an ad campaign. If you want to stay on top of all the latest Facebook advertising strategies, make sure that you subscribe to our Facebook Marketing weekly newsletter. We’ll continue covering this topic in more depth over the coming weeks and months.

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10 Killer Titles That Will Provoke Your Facebook Fans