An amazing film or magazine article can overcome a bad title. But online content with a bad headline will never get clicked on — let alone quickly Dugg or retweeted. The overabundance of good web content leaves people with little attention to spare on anything but the most tempting, succulent descriptions.

Wait for the epiphany where the perfect headline appears “in lights,” then go write your viral piece.

Too often… when working with friends and clients on viral content ideas… we’d get excited about a cool concept that can’t easily be expressed in under 65-or-so characters and then spend hours creating the content. As a very last step, they turn to the headline box and struggle to come up with something even passably awkward. Inevitably, the piece bombed… and left them with a terrible social media hangover after all that hard, creative work. Many repeated disappointments inspired me to change my workflow:

Brainstorm a list of incredible, magnetic headlines first. Once you have a stash of golden, “sure-fire winner” headlines, then go create the content that unquestionably fulfills the promise made by each of them.

Not every “cool” content concept has potential for a winning headline. By finding that out first, and then eliminating the ideas that are unlikely to be clicked on and shared – you can focus your energy on creating hit content for those headlines that do have a fighting chance.

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