How long should headlines be

Paul King of Texas Christian University who likens the act of listening and absorbing information to lifting weights: The more we are asked to take in, the heavier and heavier the load gets. King tested this on graduate students, observing that those who went to class three days a week for 50 minutes recalled more information than those who went to class one day a week for three hours. It [18 minutes] is the length of a coffee break. So, you watch a great talk, and forward the link to two or three people.

It can go viral, very easily. The minute length also works much like the way Twitter forces people to be disciplined in what they write. By forcing speakers who are used to going on for 45 minutes to bring it down to 18, you get them to really think about what they want to say. It brings discipline. Title tags are the bits of text that define your page on a search results page. Brick-and-mortar stores have business names; your web page has a title tag.

If your title exceeds 60 characters, it will get truncated with an ellipse. The design change can be seen below where a formerly ideal title has now been truncated. Quick typography lesson: Google uses Arial for the titles on its results pages, Arial is a proportionally-spaced font, meaning that different letters take up different width. Moz dug deep to see where exactly this maximum character limit surfaced for truncated titles. They found that 55 characters seemed to be the breaking point as a general rule.

According to Daily Blog Tips, these are the characteristics of a good domain name :. Daily Blog Tips also found the ideal length.

They ran an Alexa report that looked at the domains for the top websites. What lengths have you found work best for you? This article originally appeared in Buffer and is reprinted with permission.

Events Innovation Festival. Follow us:. By Kevan Lee long Read. The ideal length of a tweet is characters Whom should you trust when it comes to advice on the ideal length of a tweet? The ideal length of a Facebook post is less than 40 characters Forty characters is not much at all. The sentence I just wrote is 35 characters. This post kept the title within 60 characters and stayed on one line.

The ideal length of a headline is six words How much of the headline for this story did you read before you clicked? The ideal length of a blog post is seven minutes, 1, words When measuring the content that performs best on their site, Medium focuses not on clicks but on attention.

Search for:. Press Release Writing Tips. By: Anthony Santiago. With over a decade of experience in PR, he helps ensure that clients understand the value of brand messaging and reach. Catch up on the rest of your content marketing news and strategy. Newswire News. But let me suggest that rather than worrying about length you should worry about making every word count.

Especially the first and last 3 — and if that means using the passive voice, so be it. People certainly scan headlines, and their advice to make the first three and last three words count is fantastic. If we get all those context words into a nice scannable length of six words, all the better. When we combine the advice of scannability with the value of context words, you can see that engagement is more about the choice of words and content.

Or the amount of time it takes to read it, for that matter. There are times that a longer headline is the more effective answer because it has more emotionally-charged words that are easy to scan. Rather, we should change the conversation to what really matters. The conversation about headline length needs to transition and focus on the emotional content, including context words and ideas that engage audiences.

This lesson from neuroscience can help in many areas of marketing. It seems like teams are constantly testing whether longer or shorter emails work better. Longer or shorter subject lines. Longer or shorter web pages and copy chunks. The answer is more about the context and content than the length. If people are engaged, they will give you time. If your content is boring, they will move along, regardless of the length of copy. To receive my new articles or to read past stories, subscribe here.

Adam is an Executive Creative Director at Adobe, with experience in creativity, strategy, and storytelling for over 23 years. Before Adobe, he was a creative director at several international ad agencies, delivering award-winning advertising and campaigns. Educating, inspiring and empowering the next generation of…. Sign in. The ideal length of a headline. Adam Morgan Follow. Vunela Educating, inspiring and empowering the next generation of….

Marketing Writing Copywriting Advertising Business. Writer on data-driven creativity. Executive Creative Director, Adobe. Vunela Follow. Educating, inspiring and empowering the next generation of leaders. As you can probably imagine, the best way to measure the success of a headline through social media is to gauge the amount of shares and click-throughs.

Instead of creating headlines that can fit into a title tag, like with search engines, you want to create headlines that invoke curiosity and get people to click. Your best option here is to put a neon sign above your headline — also known as:. The key is to not overthink it and make your headline too complex, but you want to be able to boggle your readers enough to click and learn more.

However, with email, you are usually focusing more on what is going in the email subject line. Email subject line length preference really depends on your own, personal preference. The reason your subject lines are more difficult for finding the perfect length is because results vary from marketing team to marketing team. On the other hand, we did our own research , and found that email subject lines with around 50 characters got the best results.

Simply put, there may not be a solid answer, and you may just have to play around with your subject lines every time. The subject-line world is your oyster! Before you get out there and go crazy on your subject lines, keep in mind that open rates and click-through rates are not the same thing. In this situation, click-through rates are important, and these are the numbers that you should really care about being high.

What do you think? Are you ready to get out there and give these tips a try? The truth is: the only way you can understand what YOU need to create the best headline and craft the perfect headline length is to try these ideas out on your own. Go explore and discover your next big win with your best headline yet! This post was originally published on February 16, It was most recently updated and republished October 7, In her free time, she loves to bake, drink coffee, spend time with friends, and cuddle her adorable kitten, Hercules.

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