6 mistakes to avoid in your titles

Karthi Subbaraman -

Human attention is depleting day by day. Our attention span is getting worse than a gold fish (9 seconds).

As a content creator in this era, all you have is 70 characters (max 10 seconds) to grab your audience attention with your promise. You can't afford to make mistakes.

  1. Do not takes titles lightly. Brainstorm and generate as many titles as possible. Throw out title ideas that don't resonate.
  2. Do not proceed with vague titles. Probability of missing good content due to poor title is high.
  3. Titles are not set on stone. Do not settle for one title. Always be testing. You can change your title and test out.
  4. Generic titles don't work. Be as specific as possible.  for eg: "N" ways to do [X] or How to do [X] or Before you [X], do [Y] works better.
  5. Do not focus on quality of titles. Focus on rapid iteration of titles. Bad titles will get you to good ones. Quantity >> Quality.
  6. Avoid exclusionary language or jargons in titles. It backfires. Use common language everyone understands.

It is interesting to note that mistakes to avoid or how not to f**k up kind of titles tend to do really well. Mistakes create intrigue and resonance. Human cognitive bias (loss aversion) plays a role here.


“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” - David Ogilvy

Spend extra time and thought on your titles. Words affect people. It has the power to create resonance or dissonance. Use them wisely.

🥂 to titles!

P.S: It is 11:46 and I have just 14 minutes to send this piece out to put a ✅ on my atomic writing challenge for the day.

I am just hitting two birds in one shot by sharing my learnings from Minimum Viable Video Cohort sessions. If you are keen about camera confidence you must take up this 14-day Camera Confidence Challenge for free here: https://actionworks.co/ccc/

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