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How to Optimize Your Headlines for Content Discovery with Vinegar (Before You Die of Cholera)

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Previous Episode:5 Stories That Explain Jerod Morris (Plus One Massive Marketing Lesson) More Episodes Next Episode:Hot Seat: Grilling Jerod on Using Audio Content to Seed a Content Arsenal

All Episodes:

March 30, 2020

The Advantage of Email Marketing, Featuring Nathan Barry of ConvertKit

March 15, 2020

How to Write Content That Resonates

March 9, 2020

How to Conquer Your Fear of Selling, with Leah Neaderthal

March 2, 2020

How to Build Remarkable Products to Grow Your Business, with Ramit Sethi

February 17, 2020

What You Should Talk about on Your Podcast, with Tara McMullin

February 9, 2020

How to Win at Search in 2020

February 3, 2020

How to Turn Pro as a Freelance Writer

January 27, 2020

Marketing Segmentation and Personalization with Brennan Dunn of RightMessage

January 20, 2020

Podcasting Still Matters, with Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income

January 13, 2020

The New Look Copyblogger in 2020

January 8, 2020

New Year, New Copyblogger

October 23, 2019

The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur with John Jantsch

October 2, 2019

Consistency Will Take You Further

September 25, 2019

The Past, Present, and Future of Online Learning

September 16, 2019

How to Get More of the Right Things Done

September 9, 2019

Why the Future Is Still Email

September 3, 2019

What’s Next for
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August 26, 2019

How Smart, Nimble Companies Are Using Webinars Today

August 19, 2019

The Clarity Method: A Conversation with Tim Brownson

August 12, 2019

Digital Business Trends and the Latest on the Rainmaker Platform

August 5, 2019

4 ‘Naive’ Business Principles for Enduring Success

July 8, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 3: Polishing and Promotion

July 1, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 2: Getting It Written

June 24, 2019

How to Write an Epic Blog Post, Part 1: Thinking and Research

June 17, 2019

3 Almost Magical Headline Ingredients for More Traffic, Engagement, and Shares

June 10, 2019

Lessons Any Business Can Learn from an Impressive Influencer Marketing Fail

June 3, 2019

13 Ways of Looking at a Headline

May 27, 2019

The 7 ‘Bad’ Habits of Incredibly Successful People

May 20, 2019

Writers: How to Move from Making a Living to Driving Revenue

May 13, 2019

Choose the Right Frame to Boost the Power of Your Content

May 6, 2019

How Copywriting Teacher Belinda Weaver Reenergized Her Email List for Massive Engagement

April 29, 2019

3 Reasons Why Really Good Writers Sometimes Can’t Find Great Clients

April 22, 2019

3 Slightly Embarrassing Emotions that Drive Effective Copywriting

April 15, 2019

Get 10 Content Marketing Boosters in 20 Minutes

April 8, 2019

Becoming the ‘Chief Empathy Officer’ of Your Copy and Content

April 1, 2019

One of the Most Important Marketing Decisions You’ll Ever Make

March 18, 2019

What Nobody Wants to Hear about Content Marketing

March 11, 2019

Getting Your Big, Scary Projects Finished: A Conversation about Growing Gills

March 4, 2019

When Is It Time to Bring in a Professional Copywriter?

February 25, 2019

Using Content to Systematically Move Prospects Toward a Purchase

February 18, 2019

Understanding the Lifecycles of Your Website, with Pamela Wilson

February 11, 2019

5 Ways to Manage a Stress-Induced Creative Slump

February 4, 2019

3 Ways Strategic Content Can Drive Measurable Business Outcomes

January 28, 2019

The Social Media Platform Every Content Creator Should Be Using in 2019 (Nope, It’s Not Facebook)

January 21, 2019

Real Talk about Generating High-Quality Content

January 14, 2019

A Conversation with Paul Jarvis about Staying a ‘Company of One’

October 29, 2018

The 3 Plus 1 Foundational Elements of Effective Persuasion

October 22, 2018

5 Essential Copywriting Techniques from Copyblogger

October 15, 2018

5 Ways to Recover Your Professional and Creative Confidence

October 8, 2018

5 Stinky Sardine Secrets to Make Your Content More Fascinating

September 24, 2018

The Mindset ‘Hack’ that Frees Your Creativity and Makes You Happier

September 18, 2018

How to Kill Your Sales and Mess up Your Business: Lessons from a Used Car Salesman

September 4, 2018

The 7 Things Writers Need to Make a (Good) Living

August 27, 2018

Are You Making These Social Media Marketing Mistakes?

August 20, 2018

Fix These 7 About Page Mistakes for More Traffic and (Possibly) Better SEO

August 13, 2018

7 Ways to Boost Your Creativity

August 6, 2018

A 10-Step ‘Checklist’ for Your Content Marketing Site

July 30, 2018

The 3 Keys to Publishing Strong Content … Even If You Aren’t a ‘Great’ Writer (Yet)

July 23, 2018

Fix These 3 Points of Failure to Get Better Results for Your Content

July 16, 2018

Big Changes at ConvertKit: A Discussion with Founder Nathan Barry

July 9, 2018

3 Skills to Master to Become a Marketing Badass this Year

June 18, 2018

The Quiet Power of Conversational Copy

June 11, 2018

5 Rules of Thumb to Relieve SEO-Induced Stress

June 4, 2018

How to Use the GDPR to Make Your Business Stronger than Ever

May 14, 2018

‘Good Karma’ Selling that Works: A Conversation with Tim Paige

April 30, 2018

How to Get More Comfortable (and Effective) at Selling

April 23, 2018

Privacy and Permission in the Wake of Cambridge Analytica

April 16, 2018

Seth Godin and How to Create Change

April 9, 2018

Email? Chatbots? Social? How Are We Supposed to Reach People?

March 26, 2018

The Double-Edged Sword that Can Make (or Break) Your Content

March 19, 2018

Make More Progress by Getting (Gently) Out of Your Comfort Zone

March 12, 2018

Are You Doing Content Marketing Wrong?

March 5, 2018

Storytelling for Modern Content Marketing (Part 2 of 2)

February 26, 2018

Storytelling for Modern Content Marketing (Part 1 of 2)

February 19, 2018

10 Quality Factors Search Engines Need to See on Your Site

February 12, 2018

A Simple Content Strategy to Make Your Site Massively More Useful

February 5, 2018

How to Avoid a Heartbreaking Business Failure

January 29, 2018

Hey Writers: Let’s Get You Paid What You’re Worth

January 15, 2018

5 Keys to Making Your Content More Shareable

December 18, 2017

3 Observations on Trends (but not Predictions) for 2018

December 11, 2017

3 Tips Now to Build a Strong Foundation in 2018

December 4, 2017

The 3 Success Factors that Help Writers Earn a Great Living

November 27, 2017

How to Recognize a Great Content Idea

November 20, 2017

How to Cultivate a More Meaningful Gratitude Practice

November 13, 2017

Advice for Poets, Advice for Killers

October 30, 2017

Face Your Business Fears on Halloween Week

October 23, 2017

How to Make Smarter Decisions about Your Website

October 2, 2017

A Series of Unfortunate Content Events

September 18, 2017

The Evolution of a Successful Copywriter

August 28, 2017

7 Ways to Improve Your Marketing by Harnessing the Power of Evil

August 14, 2017

Smart Questions from our Brilliant Audience

August 7, 2017

Does the Web Have Enough Patience for Your In-Depth Content?

July 31, 2017

How to Write (Much Better) Blog Comments

July 17, 2017

Which Works Better: Positive or Negative Content?

July 10, 2017

How to Attract the Exact Customers You Want

July 3, 2017

How to Create Stability and Success as an Artist

June 19, 2017

Two Powerful Resources for Life-Changing Growth

June 12, 2017

How to Turn All that Marketing Advice into Action

June 5, 2017

How to Develop a Compelling Marketing Idea in 4 Steps

May 30, 2017

Getting Over the Fear of Selling

May 22, 2017

Talking Community and Digital Business with Tara Gentile

May 15, 2017

Plagiarism, Self-Deception, Bad Sandwiches, and Other Interesting Disasters

May 1, 2017

Professional Writers: Find Out How to Get Certified by Copyblogger

April 17, 2017

The Painful Core Lesson Taught by 3 Astonishing Big-Brand Fails

April 3, 2017

5 Mindset Habits that Actually Work

March 27, 2017

On Grammar, Usage, and Not Being a Great Big Jerk

March 20, 2017

Creative Strategies for Content Writers

March 13, 2017

A New Ultra-Easy Resource for Creating Excellent WordPress Sites

February 20, 2017

Thriving Freelancers and Clients from Hell

February 13, 2017

Politics, Content Marketing, and the 2017 Super Bowl Ads

February 6, 2017

Copyblogger Book Club: Winning the Story Wars

January 23, 2017

3 Content Marketing Strategy Fails (and How to Fix Them)

January 9, 2017

The 2017 Content Excellence Challenge: Your January Assignments

December 19, 2016

Bad Writing Advice: The ‘Post Truth’ Episode

December 12, 2016

Get Ready Now for a Creative and Productive 2017

December 5, 2016

The 4 Pillars Every Online Business Is Built On

November 28, 2016

Orbit Media’s Latest Survey of 1000 Bloggers

November 14, 2016

Have You Already Missed the Podcasting Gold Rush?

November 7, 2016

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October 31, 2016

5 Quick Wins for Content Marketers

October 24, 2016

Announcing: An Intriguing New Tool for Collaborative Content

October 17, 2016

A New Book to Make Content Marketing Easier

October 10, 2016

Behind the Scenes at Copyblogger: Our New Email Approach

October 3, 2016

The ‘Obligatory’ Structure of Effective Content

September 26, 2016

7 Powerful Content Strategies Borrowed from Advertising Masters

September 15, 2016

How to Handle Demographic and Psychographic Segmentation (without Looking Like an Idiot)

September 8, 2016

Ethics, Professionalism, and Good Manners for Content Marketers

September 1, 2016

3 Questions that Can Haunt Creative Professionals

August 25, 2016

How to Give and Get Exceptional Testimonials, Part Two

August 18, 2016

How to Give and Get Exceptional Testimonials, Part One

August 11, 2016

Are You Leaving Money on the Table with Weak Headlines?

August 4, 2016

Content Marketing for Nonprofits

July 28, 2016

The One-Two Punch that Creates the Most Successful Copywriters

July 21, 2016

Pokémon Go: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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July 7, 2016

Announcing: A Breakthrough Educational Collaboration between Copyblogger and U.C. Davis

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How to Break Past the #1 Conversion Killer

June 23, 2016

The New Age of Marketing Automation: Powerful, Simple, Cost-Effective

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How to Make a (Really Good) Living as a Freelance Writer

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Self-Publishing, Side Hustles, and Doing It All: A Conversation with Linda Formichelli

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A Process for Content Marketing Success

May 26, 2016

Content Marketing Best Practices: Getting Email Opt-Ins

May 19, 2016

Behind the Scenes: Adventures in Advertising

May 12, 2016

Trump, Apple, and Facebook Advertising: Content Marketing News for May, 2016

May 5, 2016

Sally Hogshead and the Art of Fascination

April 28, 2016

Behind the Scenes at the Rainmaker Digital Company Meeting!

April 14, 2016

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April 7, 2016

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March 31, 2016

Content Marketing Success Stories: Fitness Powerhouse Examine.com

March 24, 2016

Behind the Scenes: An Inside Look at the Rainmaker FM Redesign

March 17, 2016

Our Latest Advice and Resources for Digital Business Owners

March 10, 2016

Should Content Publishers Adopt Google’s New AMP?

March 3, 2016

7 Ways to Get Smarter with Social Media Listening

February 25, 2016

Content Marketing Shout-Out: Orbit Media and Andy Crestodina

February 18, 2016

The Tactic You Should Steal from Copyblogger

February 11, 2016

Content Marketing News for February, 2016

February 4, 2016

Email Marketing: The Misunderstood Powerhouse

January 28, 2016

The Secret Weapon Behind Great Websites: The Role of the Content Editor

January 21, 2016

Behind the Scenes: The Relaunch and Re-Imagining of Copyblogger.com

January 14, 2016

Trends and Predictions for Digital Commerce: A Conversation with Brian Clark

January 7, 2016

2016 Content Marketing Resolutions

December 28, 2015

The End of The Lede, The Beginning of Copyblogger FM

November 10, 2015

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The Surprising Truth about Earning a Profit from Your Content

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September 29, 2015

Revisiting Authenticity: What It Is, What It’s Not, and Why It Matters

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September 15, 2015

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September 8, 2015

Finally — A Podcast about the Superiority of Written Content

September 1, 2015

Hot Seat: Grilling Jerod on Using Audio Content to Seed a Content Arsenal

August 25, 2015

How to Optimize Your Headlines for Content Discovery with Vinegar (Before You Die of Cholera)

August 18, 2015

5 Stories That Explain Jerod Morris (Plus One Massive Marketing Lesson)

August 11, 2015

Lede Potpourri: A Big Idea, Talking About Demian Behind His Back, and Lessons from #PM15

August 4, 2015

How to Attend an Industry Conference Like a Boss

July 28, 2015

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July 21, 2015

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July 14, 2015

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July 7, 2015

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June 30, 2015

Why The Phrase ‘Leaders Are Readers’ Should Die

June 23, 2015

Why You Should Think Outside the Box About Online Courses

June 16, 2015

The Proper (and Safe) Way to Republish Old Articles

June 9, 2015

How to Grow an Audience on LinkedIn by Repurposing Content

June 2, 2015

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May 27, 2015

Rapid-Fire Takeaways from Authority Rainmaker

May 19, 2015

The Proper Way to Grow an Audience on Medium

May 12, 2015

The Introvert’s Guide to Launching a Successful Podcast

May 5, 2015

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April 28, 2015

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April 21, 2015

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April 14, 2015

Choose Yourself Part 2: James Altucher Fights Back

April 7, 2015

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March 31, 2015

Should You Really ‘Walk in the Direction of Your Fear’?

March 24, 2015

Is ‘Choose Yourself’ Good Advice … or New-Age Phooey?

March 17, 2015

Is Authority Earned or Bestowed?

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February 24, 2015

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February 17, 2015

Sally Hogshead on How You Can Unlock Your Natural Ability to Fascinate

February 10, 2015

How to Learn from Your Successes

January 27, 2015

How to Learn From Your Mistakes

January 13, 2015

Lessons Learned from Conducting Two Monster Audience Surveys

December 16, 2014

Adaptive Content: A Trend to Pay Attention to in 2015

December 2, 2014

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November 18, 2014

How We Built Our Careers Online (And What You Can Learn From It)

November 4, 2014

Interview with Brian Clark: How Customer Experience Maps Help You Develop a Smarter Content Strategy

October 21, 2014

How Empathy Maps Help You Speak Directly to the Hearts of Your Audience

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June 26, 2014

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May 30, 2014

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How to Use Internal Cliffhangers

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March 21, 2014

How to Tell a Seductive Story

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How to Create Exquisite Subheads

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How to Write Killer Bullet Points

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How to Write Damn Good Sentences

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How to Use Persuasive Words

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How to Nail Your Opening

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How to Write a Magnetic Headline (in Under 15 Minutes)

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Seth Godin on When You Should Start Marketing Your Product, Service, or Idea

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Jay Baer on How to Turn Interested Prospects into Lifelong Customers

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5 Tips for Affiliate Marketing Beginners

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Answers to the 3 Biggest Email Marketing Questions We Get

January 20, 2012

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January 13, 2012

Steven Pressfield and the War of Work

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The Strategy Behind the Copyblogger Redesign

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7 Ways to Create an Email Marketing "Snowball Effect"

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The Art of Seductive Writing: A Conversation with Robert Greene

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Why Content Marketing Doesn't Suck

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Tim Ferriss on How to Reinvent Yourself with Blog Marketing

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Your Staggeringly Unfair Marketing Advantage

November 17, 2010

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November 10, 2010

The Foundation of All Marketing that Works

November 3, 2010

Introducing Copyblogger Radio

August 25, 2015

How to Optimize Your Headlines for Content Discovery with Vinegar (Before You Die of Cholera)

Are you curious how the beginning and end of this headline actually fit together? It’s quite a promise to deliver on. Well, we do just that on this week’s episode of The Lede, improving your content discovery in the process.

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And that’s important, because optimizing your content for discovery is a foundational principle of SEO on the modern web. And the element of every piece of content that most influences whether it gets discovered or not is the headline.

On this episode of The Lede, Jerod and Demian discuss:

  • What we mean by “content discovery”
  • A short history of content discovery
  • The change in editorial strategy that led one major publication to a monthly visitor jump of ~13 million
  • The elements that make a great web writer and content producer
  • What traits a headline needs to cut through the noise and get your content discovered
  • A real-life demonstration of the 4 U’s (that will make the headline make more sense)
  • Resources you can use to improve your headline writing

All of this and more on another brand new episode of The Lede:

Listen to Copyblogger FM: Content Marketing, Copywriting, Freelance Writing, and Social Media Marketing below ...

How to Optimize Your Headlines for Content Discovery with Vinegar (Before You Die of Cholera)Jerod Morris and Demian Farnworth
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Show notes

  • How Much Does the Modern Content Marketer Need to Know About SEO?
  • Why ‘The Atlantic’ No Longer Cares About SEO
  • Copyblogger headline ebook: How to Write Magnetic Headlines
  • Jon Morrow’s headline ebook: Headline Hacks

The Transcript

How to Optimize Your Headlines for Content Discovery with Vinegar (Before You Die of Cholera)

Jerod Morris: But I am going to go learn how to wash dishes with vinegar now. I remain intrigued.

Demian Farnworth: All right. See, you are a good a man, because you’re washing the dishes, and Heather is not.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Lede, a podcast about content marketing by Copyblogger Media. The Lede, as always, is hosted by me, Demian Farnworth, and my co-host, Jerod Morris, one of the VPs of Rainmaker.FM. Jerod, say hello.

Jerod Morris: Hello, everybody. How are you?

Demian Farnworth: Jerod, you were just telling me that you got back from a pretty exciting trip to the Florida Keys, right?

Jerod Morris: I did, I did. It was remarkable. For anybody who hasn’t been there, I highly recommend it. You and I were just talking about parasailing. I highly recommend that for anybody who hasn’t done it. It’s a remarkable experience, far less scary than you would think is. It’s incredible being up that high and being able to survey everything out in front of you. It’s really great.

Demian Farnworth: When you say ‘that high,’ I speculated 35-50 feet, but you told me it was 300 feet, which is the length of a football field.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Demian Farnworth: Which is unbelievable.

Jerod Morris: It is. Three hundred feet. It’s crazy, because it doesn’t seem like you’re that high when you’re up there. When you’re watching other people do it, it seems like they’re so high up. I’m not a big heights guy. I’m pretty sensitive to heights. But it didn’t feel that bad being up there.

Demian Farnworth: Did you see any sharks in the water? Like the shadows, lurking around underneath the surface of the water?

Jerod Morris: We didn’t. We didn’t, but we were looking, but unfortunately no. Or maybe fortunately no, because we went snorkeling later.

Demian Farnworth: How long were you guys up in the air?

Jerod Morris: A good … ours was like 10-12 minutes.

Demian Farnworth: A long time to be that high. Were you ready to come down?

Jerod Morris: No. No, we wanted to stay up there.

Demian Farnworth: Really?

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Demian Farnworth: Now you kind of know how a bird feels, I guess.

Jerod Morris: Exactly, that’s what we were saying while we were up here. It’s like, “This is exactly what a bird feels like.”

Demian Farnworth: All right. Speaking of birds, you remember our conversation with Sean Jackson a few episodes ago, where we were talking about the amount of SEO the modern content marketer actually needs to know these days? Do you remember that conversation, that episode?

Jerod Morris: Can I back up to that segue? “Speaking of birds?” That was great. Yes, I do remember that conversation.

Demian Farnworth: Sean always reminds me, like some sort of spirit eagle or something like that. If he was Native American, he’d be a spirit eagle.

Jerod Morris: I could see that.

What We Mean By ‘Content Discovery’

Demian Farnworth: All right. Anyway, we were talking about SEO and the modern-day content marketer. We put spirit eagle Sean Jackson on the phone. What we came away from that episode with is, basically, wouldn’t it be fair to say that there was really not much we needed to know about SEO, because most of it was already done for us, right? Is that the conclusion we came down to?

Jerod Morris: Right. Whereas four or five years ago, SEO was its own separate thing, now it’s so integrated into everything that we’re doing. It’s not the separate thing that’s over here that you do after a post or whatever. It’s so integrated now in everything, and for those of us who have good, well-made content management systems, a lot of the infrastructure stuff is already done, which I think is a shift. A shift that continues by the year.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah. I was talking to somebody yesterday about web writers, and they were getting a take on what they thought a web writer needed to know. My stance was that they have to have an average sense of SEO. That’s why in the Rough Draft podcast, I think the first three episodes were focused, but the total of 15 minutes total, tops, is spent on SEO.

But basically, having a basic level of understanding of how SEO works, how they’re indexed, how they’re crawled by search engines. Outside of that, though, the keywords, the words on the page, the content on the page, is important. The content has to be accessible by the search engines, which is important too.

Knowing that alone is helpful as a content producer, a web writer online, but I don’t think you really need to know any more than that. During our conversation with Sean, do you remember how we ended the show? He gave that single, best piece of advice on what we could now do in this new world order he was talking about, where SEO is dead and content discovery, was his word that he used, is alive now. Do you remember that piece of advice?

Jerod Morris: I believe so. I believe it had to do with headlines, if I remember correctly.

Demian Farnworth: Absolutely, yeah, which kind of surprised me. I guess I was waiting for something more profound. He is the spirit eagle. He was pretty firm. You’ve got to get good at writing headlines.

Jerod Morris: In its own way, that is profound. Sometimes the simple answer is the profound one. Sometimes the time-tested, age-old advice remains the best advice. At Copyblogger, we’ve been focusing on headlines for a long time. You and I have already done several episodes of The Lede on headlines.

But again, it’s something that I think we constantly need to be refreshed about, be reminded about, because sometimes, we can get stuck in the tactics and forget some of the big-picture, overarching ideas that consistently work.

That’s the thing about headlines. It is this age-old advice, but it keeps becoming more and more important, which I think was one of the big ideas Sean was trying to get across.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah, or we get distracted by the shiny new objects that come along, and they take us away from the fundamentals. Correct me if I’m wrong — you’re the sports sage here in our company, I think, at least on this show — the Packers coach who won the first two Super Bowls, didn’t he say something like, “It’s just about mastering the fundamentals?” I think he had a saying, it was a really short saying.

Jerod Morris: Vince Lombardi?

Demian Farnworth: Yeah, Vince Lombardi.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I don’t know what the exact quote is, but certainly, he was one who focused on the fundamentals. A lot of those old-school coaches did, and a lot of the best coaches of today do as well.

A Short History of Content Discovery

Demian Farnworth: Right, it’s like you said — that’s what’s profound about it, and that does make a lot of sense. I think, though, how we write headlines changes. It adapts over time. What we’ve written, used, in the past — I’m talking ‘the past’ like decades ago — I could say the templates are the same, but I would say even in some sense, these templates that we use change in some way, too. It’s probably because of the way the web environment has changed.

Let’s talk a little about a short history of content discovery.

This focus for me occurred, this change of focus from an SEO emphasis — I remember the moment clearly. It was a watershed moment in my life where I read an article in Mashable. It was an interview, actually, with Scott Havens, who was the senior vice president of finance and digital operations at the Atlantic Media Company at the time. The name of the article was ‘Why The Atlantic No Longer Cares About SEO.’ I liked the maverick approach they took. Basically, he was saying, “We’re no longer going to put such a heavy emphasis upon SEO. We’re not abandoning it, even though that’s what the headline suggests.”

He was saying that there’s a new kid on the block, and that kid on the block was social media, which amounted to content discovery.

The Change in Editorial Strategy That Led One Major Publication to a Monthly Visitor Jump of ~13 Million

Demian Farnworth: The interesting thing about The Atlantic, the site, was that in 2008, it took down its paywall, and from doing that and then switching its focus from SEO to content discovery, the site went from 500,000 monthly visitors to 13.4 million monthly visitors.

The change that they implemented was basically just an editorial strategy. What they did was focus on headlines. The person who wrote the article was responsible for coming up with the headline. That headline might end up on the actual article that gets published. However, there was also a features/homepage headline writer who might rewrite the headline to grab more attention and more clicks from the homepage.

The headline might get rewritten for social media, and it might get rewritten for Facebook. You might not get the same headline for Twitter or for Google Plus and all these different places.

Because what was important was getting that share. Because ultimately, what they were driving for is, you read an article, Jerod. You share it because you like it, because the headline interests you, whatever. And then I see it, and I click on it.

We’ve come from this place where we no longer depend so much upon going out and looking for content, but we take the recommendations that are made through our friends, mostly through social media. Does that make sense?

Jerod Morris: Yeah. And it would be interesting in this Atlantic example to know — like you said, when they took down the pay wall, they jumped from 500,000 to 13.4 million monthly visitors — what percentage of that was visitors from search engines before and what was after they “no longer cared about SEO.” My guess is they probably still got more traffic from search because the addition of the social signals probably helped signal even to the search engines that this content was more relevant, that it was more useful, and it would start surfacing more.

That’s the thing with headlines, and maybe that’s why this advice from Sean was surprising in a sense. I think maybe people have too narrow of an idea of headlines. They think of just the headline on the page, but when we say ‘headlines’ now, it’s a more broad definition of what a headline is, because it’s also a Twitter headline. It’s what’s shared on Facebook. It’s an email subject line.

For the same piece of content, you can have three, four, five different headlines depending on the audience, depending on the medium, and it’s extremely important to not just have one headline for all of them, but to understand the different audiences and the different places. Like you said, there may be a feature headline writer who’s writing it different for this page over here, as opposed to this page over here.

It’s important to really understand that, because again, the idea here is about discovery. It’s about cutting through the noise. We know that there’s so much noise. The headline is the way that you do that, because number one, sometimes — and you just hit on this — people will share an article on social media without even reading it just because of the headline, because the headline fits their worldview in some way, so they’ll share it. Maybe they’ll read it later. Hopefully they’ll read it later, at a minimum, but we all know that doesn’t always happen.

For people who do read the article, it’s got to start somewhere. It’s got to start with that headline. And with so much content, with us being inundated with so much content seemingly all the time, the headline is the way to cut through that to at least pare down what we actually take a look at.

We’ve talked on The Lede in past episodes a lot about how most people don’t actually read through an entire article. Obviously there are other elements that are important, but none of them mean anything without the headline. You can’t have a good SEO strategy without a good discovery strategy, and it all starts with that headline being appropriate for the medium where it’s going, grabbing attention, and getting something opened, or as we said, getting it shared without it being opened.

Demian Farnworth: Right, to piggyback on what you’re saying, too, is after I read that — I think it was 2012 when that article came out in Mashable about The Atlantic — I had this epiphany. The pieces of the puzzle started to fall in place for me, because I noticed that a lot of people — this is the caution portion of this episode of The Lede, people — would put an enormous amount of work into the headline, which is a great thing, but they forgot about the article. The article was a catastrophe. It wasn’t very good at all.

They lost an opportunity, because by focusing on the headline and not having great content, you might get more clicks in the near term, but it’s not a good long-term strategy. So you have to pay attention to how you do that. Social media has changed the way we’ve written headlines and content.

But the other thing, too, content discovery — Yahoo was more like an index or directory. Then Google came along and really started nurturing the discovery by search, and then you had Google AdWords, which you could then, as a publisher, promote your work and get it in front of more people. Then along came Facebook, and again, the social sharing, but then also the ads that you could do to promote that work.

But now we also have a group of algorithms that I call ‘human algorithms,’ people like Dave Pell who do the NextDraft and Quartz news site who do their own daily newsletter, who are going out there and collecting and curating the best articles they find and sharing them in a daily newsletter.

Dave Pell does the top 10 best news articles he thinks of. He has his own spin on them. He’s going to choose them. He is biased in some sense. He tries to find the things that are important, but he’s got a huge audience. There’s a trend toward this idea of doing this curated newsletter, because people are noticing that there’s so much content out there, that “I’m going to be the person who’s going to filter that for somebody else.”

I know we talked about this before in our episodes on curation where the aggregator, that curator, is becoming more prized in this age where more and more information is getting piled on us. We want somebody to go in there and say, “Hey, this is what’s important.” Dave Pell does a nice little business for us, because he also gives a summary and his own little commentary, sometimes commentary and analysis.

Another great example is Maria Popova of Brain Pickings who does this with books, creates commentary, but she’s curating content.

My point in bringing all that up is this idea that you have to have a great headline, but you also have to have really, really good content, too, because the headline gets people’s attention, but the content keeps that attention. The content aligns you with that person. It’s what actually creates the allegiance between you and that person, the consistent, good content like that.

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up, because certainly, the focus on the headline, and the focus on having different headlines for different audiences, different mediums, is not to say that it should take away from the content. Because ultimately, empty shares, like you said, won’t do anything for you in the long term. They have to be shares that are meaningful, that bring people back to meaningful content.

Because for our purposes, we’re talking to people who are running businesses online and who have goals for their content and want people to follow calls to action. We’re not talking to the people who are just out there trying to get a million page views, and they don’t care if the people bounce in a second.

It’s very important that there’s a promise made, that the promise is kept, and that you deliver on that promise within the content. I think what we do want to try and focus on here is that you don’t want to take all your time on writing headlines and take that away from your content, but maybe spend a little bit more time on the headline. Don’t just slap on the first thing that comes to your mind, but really spend time thinking about what your on-page headline is going to be, how that might shift a little bit for your SEO headline, especially since that’s the one that’s often taken by Twitter, taking that into account.

Take these different elements of the headline into account based on where it’s going to go so that you optimize for that discovery depending on the place where that content is going to be seen and where that headline is going to be seen.

The Elements That Make a Great Web Writer and Content Producer

Demian Farnworth: That’s right. Before we jump into tips on how to write great headlines, I’ve mentioned this before: when I think of a great web writer, a great content producer, I said above, they need to have at least an average sense of SEO. That can be accomplished pretty easily. They need an average understanding of usability, too, which is, in some sense now, really a subset of SEO. We talked about web-responsive sites and the right text, font and everything. Google is actually starting to weigh those things in when they’re factoring content on a page.

But the three other things that will then rise you above what’s typically out there are an above-average understanding of social media, an above-average understanding of storytelling, and an above-average understanding of copywriting. I mentioned the storytelling part because it’s almost the journalistic arm of being a good web writer: knowing good research techniques, good interview techniques. But ultimately, it’s really good techniques on how to tell a story, because that’s the bottom line. It’s what people want. They want their information, for the most part, packaged in a good story.

Knowing those things, having those things — an average sense of SEO, average sense of usability, but an above-average sense of social media — is mostly important in this context of content discovery. That’s why I won’t jump on every single new social media site that comes out, but at some point, I like to do an experiment like I did with Medium or I did with Google Plus or LinkedIn, publishing on those sites to see how they work in those elements so I can help fill in any kind of gaps in my knowledge if I have any.

Anything to add upon that before we talk about headline tactics?

What Traits a Headline Needs to Cut through the Noise and Get Your Content Discovered

Jerod Morris: Yeah, I like what you said with the above-average understanding of storytelling, because that is so important. I think this is where your headline starts to fit in. You want to hint at that story in the headline. Understand that people want to be wrapped up in stories.

I know when I’m looking through my list of podcasts that I want to listen to, and there’s way more options than I actually have time to listen to, I almost always end up listening to the ones that there’s some kind of story alluded to in the headline or in the very first part of the description, because I know that’s going to be a more pleasant listening experience and that I’ll get something out of it because I’ll get into it.

Having that understanding of the storytelling is important, and then the headline is how to entice people to take the first bite of your story. Now, if you have that above-average understanding and you understand copywriting techniques that will keep people going, that’s when you’ve really hit that sweet spot.

I think all of this kind of fits together to getting people A) to pay attention, B) to give it a chance, and then C) to obviously follow it all the way through to whatever the call to action ends up being.

But it’s got to start with that headline. Again, we’ve talked about this before. Consider this your regular Lede reminder that if you haven’t been really paying attention to your headlines and if you’re not trying out 25, 30 different headlines for each piece of content, that’s not a piece of hyperbole that we throw around because it sounds good.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m doing a headline or an email subject line or whatever it is, I’m typing a lot of those out to see what they look like together. I know what the components are, but the best way to phrase it and put it together and what’s going to be most compelling.

This is kind of that regular Lede reminder that, “Hey, maybe this is a time to reassess what you’re doing with your headline.” Assuming that you’re starting from that foundation of good, solid content that fits in with everything we talked about. Maybe this is a chance, and I know we’re going to talk about some resources here in a second, but to add a few more tools to the toolbox that will make your headlines even better, help them cut through the noise.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah, that’s easily the element that gives me the most fits, the element that I agonize the most over, because if you think about it, it’s the first impression that you’re going to make on an audience. You can always second-guess yourself. Of course you want to create the headlines, and you want to experiment and test.

Jerod, what do you know about headlines, and what do you tell people about headlines when people ask you for advice?

Jerod Morris: I think a good place to start is the four U’s, which we talk about on Copyblogger a lot. You know what’s funny about the four U’s is that I always forget one of them, and it’s always a different one when I’m trying to list them out: ultra-specific, unique, useful, urgent. Hey, I remembered all four.

Demian Farnworth: There you go.

Jerod Morris: And again, your headline isn’t always going to incorporate all four, but I think it should always incorporate two, and if you can fit three in there, great. I really think as you look at the different iterations as you type out different ones, write out different ones, whatever your process is, really make sure you identify, “Okay, here’s what’s ultra-specific about this one. Here’s what’s useful.” Make sure you get those elements in there.

For me, that’s always a good starting point, and then I think having certain time-tested templates. At the end of the day, there’s a science to writing headlines. There’s definitely an art to it. There’s no question. But there’s a science to it as well.

Frankly, if people want to look at good headlines, go to Rough Draft, Demian’s podcast, and look at the different headlines that he has. They incorporate a lot of these U’s, but there’s a lot of uniqueness to them, and there are these hints at the stories that I’m talking about.

Demian, I think you do a really good job of that. It’s actually something I’m trying to do a better job of. I think I’m good at technical headline writing. If you looked at them, you’d be like, “Oh yeah, that really follows that template. That has those U’s in there.” But you have an extra element that makes them enticing and adds that curiosity gap to it, which are kind of like next-level headline writing techniques.

I think as you get into that, and again, having some templates where you really see what people have done — and not necessarily fill-in-the-gaps, but kind of fill-in-the-blanks — there is some of that that can work. Stuff that worked even 50 years ago still works today, because it’s still the same people with the same psychological triggers that are going to be looking at your headlines.

A Real-Life Demonstration of the 4 U’s (That Will Make the Headline Make More Sense)

Demian Farnworth: Sure. Let’s give a little demonstration in case there’s anybody in doubt about the four U’s. I’ve shared this before, maybe on this show, but I know certainly on Rough Draft. The example I always like to give when I’m talking about the four U’s and explaining it to somebody is — useful, I always start with useful. The best way to do that is just to do a how-to: ‘How to Wash Dishes.’ But you and I both know, Jerod, that article has probably been written a thousand times. It’s not going to get any traction, so you have to add another element to it.

Make it unique. So, ‘How to Wash Dishes with Vinegar.’ Now it’s unique, because now you’ve taken it out of the realm of just washing dishes to washing dishes with something specifically different than normal people think about washing dishes.

But yet, it’s still somewhat not as vibrant as you’d like it to be. Let’s make it ultra-specific. So we’d say, ‘87 Ways to Wash Dishes with Vinegar,’ right? Now it’s ultra-specific.

Jerod Morris: Eighty-seven ways?

Demian Farnworth: Eighty-seven ways, right. You better be able to deliver on that 87 ways. Maybe it’s ‘11 Ways to Wash Dishes.’ But now the urgent part, and we’re going to take it up a notch. There’s going to be something at stake now with the urgency. It’s ’87 Ways to Wash Dishes with Vinegar before You Die of Cholera.’ Now you’ve made it where people are like, “Holy smokes, I better stop what I’m doing to check that out.”

The thing, too, I get this question a lot when people are talking about urgency. There’s usually two ways you can talk about urgency. One is where you’ve raised the stakes, like something is going to happen if you don’t do something now. In some senses, it’s like, ‘Don’t Buy Another Car Until You Read about This Recall Report.’ Or it’s a deadline, like ‘This Sale Will End by Midnight.’ That ‘midnight’ is a deadline. It makes it urgent, so you better read it now. There’s a timeframe to it.

Because the urgent part is really the piece that gets people off their duff and to say, “Okay, I need to do something about this.”

Jerod Morris: Think about the example that you just put. Think about all four of those rolling down your Twitter stream. Which one are you going click on? You’re going to click on that last one, because it grabs you. That’s the one that calls out to you. Again, we’re talking about content discovery here.

Demian Farnworth: Right, particularly if there is actually a cholera epidemic going on in your region or something like that. People are going to think, “That’s relevant to me right now.”

Jerod Morris: Have you ever actually written that article?

Demian Farnworth: I have not, no.

Jerod Morris: Now I want to read it.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah, I have no idea how to wash dishes with vinegar. We have a washing machine.

Jerod Morris: How very nice.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah. The four U’s, your templates — any other advice that you give people?

Resources You Can Use to Improve Your Headline Writing

Jerod Morris: I usually point to the Copyblogger headline ebook, because frankly, that’s where I go if I ever get stumped. I go and look through there, and again, I look for templates.

I don’t know if I would call it a rut, but maybe that’s the right word. I get into headline ruts where I start using the same one over and over. Naturally, it’s the first one that comes to my mind, and I’ve got to shock myself out of it. I need to see some different ways and get a little jolt of, “Oh yeah, okay,” and a different path to take with my headlines.

There’s so many examples, so many really great examples in there. The other thing is, when you notice good headlines, take note of them. Write them down. Put them in Evernote. Then go revisit them later. Because it may not be something where you can just substitute nouns or whatever, but it may still jog your creative juices on a future headline that you’re trying to write, being able to look through a swipe file of all the different great ones that you’ve seen.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah, like you said, the four U’s template, it’s a starting point, but it’s up to you to put in variables that are meaningful and that reflect who you are and that share your voice.

I know sometimes I have to sit down and I have to work through, another good resource, Jon Morrow’s Headline Hacks ebook, which is also free. I go through that, because he’s got 52 examples there. I’ll take my article, the idea of the headline variables that I have, and I’ll try to work through as many of those headlines as I can until I land on something. Same with the Copyblogger headline ebook.

And then if that’s not working, or like you said, if I’m in a rut where I’ve been using the Copyblogger one too much or Jon Morrow one too much, I’ll grab my copy of John Caples’ Tested Advertising Methods. He’s got 39 different templates. I’ll then work though that.

This is the thing: it takes a lot of work. It’s laborious. It’s time-consuming. But you’ve just got to do the work, and eventually, I’ll hit upon something. I’m like, “Yeah, that’s it.” I’ll write that one out and a few more.

The other thing, though, too, sort of what you were alluding to, Jerod. You talked about making it your own. I’ve made my headlines my own. That’s only after years of swarming over these templates and over these ebooks and these books, but also spending an enormous amount of time studying headlines that are being written out there on popular sites like Upworthy and Business Insider and Inc. and Entrepreneur and seeing how they’re writing headlines and what’s getting attention and what’s most popular.

What’s really fun, too, is to go to — I think it’s The New York Times. They have the most popular articles, and they have their most emailed, and it’s always interesting to see the difference between the two. And then is it possible to use a headline in one of those categories as a skeleton for the thing that I’m working on? Because sometimes I’ll find, “Yeah, that’s the direction of how I wanted to go, but I’m just going to use my variables instead.” BuzzFeed is another good one. Men’s Journal is another good one too, where I know that there’s top-notch writers knocking out really good headlines.

Jerod Morris: You know, every time we talk about headlines I start feeling immense pressure to write the perfect headline for this episode.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: I’m feeling that right now, and I’m wondering if the headline should just be ‘How to Write Really Good Headlines with Vinegar before You Die of Cholera.’

Demian Farnworth: I love it. It should be. Now one of my other favorite go-to sites to look for headline ideas is Marc and Angel’. It’s like life hacks or something. The thing I always tell people who say, “lists suck and they don’t work and I hate them,” I point them to that site, because that’s all that site is — one list after another. They’re into affirming people and encouraging people to choose themselves. I think if you haven’t read it, you should, Jerod.

They have got great headlines. I go there, and I’m like, “Okay, how do I want to phrase this?” Because they phrase it in an emotional way that I think really pulls on people. The fact that it’s ultra-specific with the number is a side benefit. But it’s the way that they phrase it, and they’ve made it emotional. They’ve made it really, really personal. I think they do a great job on that site.

Jerod Morris: That’s good. And you mentioned that you’ve gotten good at this and comfortable doing it over time. That’s the thing with headlines: it can be a little bit intimidating, because we want to write the perfect headline tomorrow. We may need to write some standards headlines for a while and follow the ‘rules’ for a while until we’re comfortable enough with them that we can break them.

If you’re frustrated with your headlines, start with some of the templates. Start with the time-tested stuff. Get comfortable with them, and then you’ll start to get a feel for, “Okay, I can bust out of this a little bit here. Okay, for my Twitter headline, let me tweak this a little bit here, because I know the audience is a little bit different.”

You’ll start to get better, but take it one step at a time. You’re not going to start from a point where you’ve never really written headlines before to being at Demian level. You’ve got to go through the steps, learn the rules, and then eventually, you’ll be comfortable incorporating them in unique ways, even breaking them at certain points of time.

Again, all of those elements are what will help your headlines cut through the noise in whatever environment they’re in and get that content discovered. And then it’s up to your content to do the rest. It’s got to deliver, but it’s got to be discovered first.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah, there’s this kind of trend — I don’t know, movement — online that people talk about: don’t be a perfectionist, fight that, resist that, be authentic, vulnerable, that sort of thing. That’s all well and good, but I think when it comes to a headline, and I’ve got a very good reason to say this, it is very important to be a perfectionist, because you cannot ever really get satisfied with your headlines.

I say that because there’s this great story. I don’t remember what president it was, but one of his cabinet members came in, and they had a report to turn in. He asked — I don’t know if it was Hoover or Eisenhower — but he asked the cabinet member, “Is this the best you can do?” The cabinet member sheepishly looked up at him and took his paper back and left. He came in a second time, and he laid the report out before him again, and the president said, “Is this the best you can do?” And again, he sheepishly looked up at him and took the report back. The third time, he finally returned, and he said, “Is this the best you can do?” and he said, “Yes, it is the best I can do.” And he said, “Now I will actually read it.”

The point being, in saying that, is that you have to resist the temptation to go the easy route, and once you find a headline that you think works, push a little bit further and see if you can find an even better one or even the best one. And you may not, you may go back and say, “No, that’s the best one I got.” Which is fine, but the idea is not to be too easily satisfied, because I think often that’s what it is. We get our hands on a template and think that now we can create good headlines, but then we realize that “There’s something, there’s some magic that I’m missing, and what is that?” You’re just not pushing hard enough for it.

Jerod Morris: And it is easy to fall into that trap with headlines, because if you’ve created good content, it’s probably taken you some time. There’s probably a little piece of your soul in that content, and when you get done with it, you’re probably a little bit exhausted. I feel like that after a podcast that I record and after articles that I write, and that’s how you should feel. Fight the urge to just slap any old headline on there and to slap the same headline on there for all the different mediums where it will go.

Now if you need to take a step away and then come back to the headline writing later when you’re fresh, that’s fine. Or maybe you started with the headline, and that’s great, too, but don’t skimp on that time. Don’t, like you said, Demian, just go with the first instinct just to get something on there. The work is not done when the article is finished and it’s time to put the headline on it or the podcast is recorded and it’s time to put the headline on it. It’s just starting.

Because the real work is with the headline so that it gets noticed in the first place. Don’t underestimate how important they are.

Demian Farnworth: That’s right. That’s right. Good advice, Jerod. Well, anything else you want to add before we close this episode?

Jerod Morris: No, I think that’s all. But I am going to go learn how to wash dishes with vinegar now. I remain intrigued.

Demian Farnworth: All right. See, you are a good a man, because you’re washing the dishes, and Heather is not.

Jerod Morris: That’s right.

Demian Farnworth: All right, buddy, it was good talking to you. Everyone, thank you so much for listening to The Lede. And if you like our show, if you like Jerod and I, jump over to iTunes, and leave us a rating and a review. We love hearing from you guys. We love getting feedback.

If you have any questions, follow-up questions, on this episode or any other episode, feel free to reach out to us on Twitter. I’m @demianfarnworth.

Jerod Morris: Yes.

Demian Farnworth: And Jerod Morris is @jerodmorris.

Jerod Morris: For anybody who listened all the way to the end, send us your favorite headline of yours. If you’ve written a great headline recently, send it to us. I’d love to see it.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah.

Jerod Morris: We can’t promise that we’re not doing this so that we can steal some great new headline idea template, because we may be, but we’ll share them out, because again, I like seeing different headlines that people have, especially if there is one that worked. Tweet it to us. Let’s talk about why it worked.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah, and I’ll throw this out there, too — if you want feedback on it, let us know. If you have a headline and you want help, I’d be happy to reply on Twitter or something like that with any advice.

Jerod Morris: Me too.

Demian Farnworth: Yeah, feel free to reach out. All right, gang, good talking to you, and until next time, take care.

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Comments

  1. Karma says

    August 27, 2015 at 9:56 AM

    Damn. I thought this was going to be about a trendy new marketing app called Vinegar. Only a little disappointed.

    Reply

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