5 HuffPo Headlines and Why They Work – or How Warm Fuzzies, Harmless Indulgences and Toddler Tantrums Fuel a Media Empire

Content is the scrunched-up newspaper that lights companies on fire (in an awesome way).

Amazing content comes from the heart. So, when ideas about a company blog were bouncing around the Convertri office, we asked ourselves: what do we love doing most of all, and how can we use it to help you?

Kittens. GIFs of kittens and stock photos with hilarious captions. That’s what we love, according to 86.3% of our staff.

So, using our brand spanking new blog, we hope to light your way down the misty path of conversion marketing with crunchy balls of informative content – and kittens.

Not unlike a little site called the Huffington Post.

For us marketing nerds, HuffPo are – love them or hate them – experts at conversion, putting out content that people read, love and share every single day. They’ve nailed it, due in no small part to their cracking headlines.

Not just in a “Dad Films 6 Minutes Of Students Slipping On Ice With Running Commentary” kind of way (although – you just opened that in a new tab, didn’t you?) – some of them employ subtle marketing tactics to tickle the ol’ itchy clicking fingers.

So, in the spirit of research (i.e. nicking their ideas) and looking at pictures of cute kittens (yay!), we’ve taken apart 5 of the best HuffPo headlines to see what makes them tick:

1. I’m Done Making My Kid’s Childhood Magical

Published in 2014, this post has 230k shares to date, making it a pretty big hit for the media company and for its author, Bunmi Laditan. Parents are a big audience for the Huffington Post, so it seems counter-intuitive to proudly display a headline that’s – well, frankly, a bit of a toddler tantrum.

However, there’s a lot going on here: making childhood ‘magical’ is something you would do, wouldn’t you? No? You monster. Yet, parents feel enormous pressure to make their child’s life Instagrammable and Pinteresting… and it’s privately exhausting. The phrase ‘I’m Done’ implies that – gasp! – some parent actually DID stop the madness – but it all turned out okay, because she wasn’t murdered by a rogue Parent’s Council and went on to publish on HuffPo.

How to swipe this headline? Call attention to a problem, challenge or ‘wow’ moment of your reader’s life that will mean nothing outside their niche community. This is powerful because you’re accomplishing two things: A. establishing yourself as an insider (“We’re all in this together!”) and putting something into words they might not be able to (“Wow, she must be an expert! Let’s listen!”), both excellent ways of getting readers on your side.

2. 300 Plumbers Poured into Flint, Michigan, To Install Water Filters For Free

You could have found this one on Upworthy, a site whose entire business model comprises of the phrase “warm fuzzies” – because it works.

Heartwarming stories have a great chance at going viral, so if your story leaves readers feeling a bit gooey, you’re already out of the starting gate. But even if you’re a hard-hearted cynic like us, there’s more to this headline that’s swipe-able:

For instance, using exact numbers in your headline will pique readers’ curiosity much more than if you simply stated ‘a lot’. Plus, the concept of seeing 300 plumbers anywhere but queuing outside Greggs at five to eight in the morning will be alien to most readers – why plumbers?

As they read on, they get the warm fuzzies – but they also see the word ‘free’, which is one of the defined so-called ‘power words’ that boost conversions. Does it mean free stuff? Not in this context – but the promise of a gift or ‘freedom’ from some kind of challenge or problem is enough to poke the subconscious into reading on.

Look for exact numbers, a heartwarming angle or a way to get the word ‘free’ – or the power word of your choice – into your headline, for a powerful conversions boost.

3. Coloring Isn’t Just for Kids. It Can Actually Help Adults Combat Stress

So… how many grown up colouring books have you got on your shelf in the wake of the biggest Christmas gift trend of 2015/2016?

Me? Seven. And I still need a coffee before I can talk to other humans.

Stress-busting merits of meditative colouring-in aside, this headline focuses on something we all want: idea validation. Our bleak, adult lives are filled with vices: junk food, smoking, procrastination, chronic nagging… down to harmless indulgences, like colouring books and buying too many iron-on patches for our jackets. But we love to think that we’re making good choices, even when the evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.

That’s why, when a headline comes along confirming these sneaking suspicions, it’s like a little hit of dopamine that says: “You were right all along!”

And that is a feeling readers want more of.

To use this swipe, link a validation with a tangible benefit: first, identify a harmless (or not-so-harmless) indulgence, and approve of it by describing a great outcome or side-effect. Love lie-ins? No problem, millionaires sleep ‘til noon! Can’t kick the caffeine habit? Doctors say it helps your heart. Now, buy coffee!

It’s a heady feel-good cocktail that leaves your audience wanting more. Speaking of which, I think I’ll put on another pot of java…

4. To Anyone Who Thinks They’re Falling Behind in Life

The phrase ‘once upon a time’ is used in every fairytale because it’s been used so often it’s actually transcended cliche to become a subliminal command: ‘you’re going to hear a story, so shut up and listen’.

So, too, have ‘to’ and ‘dear’ and ‘attention’ become ‘this is a letter, it is yours to read’.

And who doesn’t love getting a letter?

In the age of spam email, personalisation has become rare and prized: this is why signatures appear handwritten, and subject lines include your first name.

This headline is not only subliminally personalised, it’s charged with emotion – something which helps anything go viral – because many of us think we’re falling behind at one point or another.

Another pivotal element in this headline? The word ‘thinks’: notice how the headline would change if that was a definite ‘is’. If you are falling behind in life, that’s depressing – but if you only think you are, there’s a chance you can turn things around for the better.

How do you find out? Hmm, better click the article…

In fact, the only way this headline could be improved is if they narrowed it down: ‘falling behind in life’ is vague. Maybe ‘To Anyone Who’s Afraid of Making Their Child’s Life Unmagical’ would work.

Or just simply using a subliminal command to read (e.g. ‘once upon a time’, or ‘dear X’), and reassuring readers all is not lost.

5. This Billionaire Governor Taxed the Rich and Increased the Minimum Wage – Now, His State’s Economy Is One of the Best in the Country

Headlines that are a bit of a mouthful can do well – contrary to what most sources say. There is the fact that readers don’t expect to be met with a small wall of text in the title of the article, so they’re curious to see if it can explain itself.

Length aside, this headline works partially because of its ‘recipe’ formula: i.e. ‘this guy did this, then this, and had this outcome’. Readers love certainty. They love reassurance (bless). If we can explain complex economic concepts this easily… anyone could improve their state.

Not only that, but this headline delivers a double political punch: it almost dares right-wingers to read and respond, because the message is counter to their beliefs. But it also confirms something left-wingers suspected all along, thus triggering that delicious little hit of dopamine.

Whether you want to get rich quick or just bug your governor, an unexpected outcome makes readers want to investigate. After all, they’ve read the headline and their life still isn’t perfect – there has to be more…

To swipe this headline, outline your process in as few steps as simply as possible, then reveal the amazing transformative outcome – readers will have to click to find out how you did it (and how they can do it, too).

These headline formulas are not new, but they’ve been adapted to fit our bitesize, shareable, tweetable, information-obsessed social ecosystem. Use these wisely, and if you have enough creative stamina, they’ll be the only headline formulas you’ll ever need.

And if you still can’t think of anything?

Just say what you do got. It worked for a bored dad parked outside a school for six minutes on a wintry February morning.

Inspiration is everywhere. And that’s the cat’s whiskers.