You are currently viewing How to Use Curiosity Gaps to Write Headlines People Must Click

How to Use Curiosity Gaps to Write Headlines People Must Click

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Content

Humans are naturally curious creatures โ€” we always want to continue learning and increasing our understanding of the world around us.

This is where the psychologyย of curiosity gaps in your content strategy can really come in handy; if you have something that makes your audience question their knowledge about a subject or want to know more, they are bound to click to find answers.

These answers should be provided to your readers through your content. Seems easy enough, right?

Well, we want to make this tactic even easier for you. Read on to learn more about the infamous curiosity gap, how to use one effectively, and available templates to make writing headlines using them easy.

[Tweet “How to use curiosity gaps to write headlines people must click.”]

Make the Most of Your Curiosity Gap Research

Writing a headline that inspires intrigue can be tricky, but you donโ€™t have to do it alone. Weโ€™ve compiled a downloadable file of templates you can use to create your next head-scratching headline, which is bound to pull in readers aching to satisfy their curiosity through your content.

This helpful download includes:

  • 100 Headline Templates: Personalize some of these nifty headline ideas to match your brand, service, or content. Youโ€™re bound to find a few in this expansive list that are sure to spark some great headline ideas.
  • A PDF of Useful Headline Words: Are you struggling to find the perfect word to complete your headline? Browse through these lists of power, emotion, uncommon, and common words to make your headline more intriguing to readers.
  • A Headline Infographic: This helpful infographic is a great way for visual learners to understand why headlines are so important and how you can make your next headline impactful.

[content_upgrade_shortcode]

Try Out CoScheduleโ€™s Headline Analyzer

For additional help with creating the perfect headline, try CoScheduleโ€™s trusty Headline Analyzer. The Headline Analyzer will give you the advice you need to boost the engagement results of your next headline โ€” free!

Headline Analyzer

Now that you have your hands full with some amazing resources, letโ€™s dive in.

What is a Curiosity Gap?

Andrew Davis, a marketing keynote speaker, was interviewed by our Inbound Marketing Director, Ben Sailer, for CoScheduleโ€™s Actionable Marketing Podcastย to discuss curiosity gaps.

Hereโ€™s what Davis had to say about identifying a curiosity gap:

Andrew Davis quote about curiosity gaps

Curiosity gaps are a way to create an itch for an audience that they need to scratch โ€” the scratch is defined as looking through your content to find an answer to something they donโ€™t know yet. Itโ€™s veryย important that you provide your audience with the information they want to know, otherwise your curiosity gap is no longer a curiosity gap; itโ€™s clickbait.

Whatโ€™s the difference?

Well, clickbait typically functions similarly to a curiosity gap; however, when you offer clickbait, you donโ€™t give your reader a concrete answer to a burning question that resulted from your content.

Hereโ€™s a great example:

Silly clickbait example
BluLeadz

In this clickbait example, youโ€™re expecting something out of the ordinary to be waiting for you at the end of the article, but itโ€™s something as underwhelming as a โ€œmini-whirlpoolโ€.

Riveting.

When you are offering answers to a curiosity gap, you are earning the trust and respect from your audience by giving them information they want to know. If you reject your audienceโ€™s request to learn more about a topic or over-hype you content, youโ€™re bound to irritate them, drive them away, and lose their trust. Weโ€™ll touch more on this later.

How Do They Increase Traffic and Engagement?

The answer to this question is quite straightforward: if you offer your audience the answer to a burning question in their minds, theyโ€™re likely to click on your content to learn more.

Letโ€™s break it down.

Letโ€™s say your headlineย reads, โ€œ25 Hacks That Will Simplify the Way You Deep Cleanโ€. A headline that leaves a variety of answers open to the imagination will entice your readers to try and figure out what those answers are.

Whatโ€™s the easy way out of this itching curiosity? Well, checking out your content, of course โ€” as long as youโ€™ve kept your promise to your audience by providing them with a short and simple explanation.

Examples of Headlines That Use Curiosity Gaps

CNN curiosity gap example
CNN

This is a good example of a headline that effectively uses a curiosity gap because the reader is given the action (โ€œA stranger saved me from a Christmas blizzard”) and the result of said action (“Now Iโ€™m stranded again”), but this headline doesnโ€™t tell us how we got there; thatโ€™s our curiosity gap.

KnowTechie news curiosity gap example
KnowTechie

McDonaldโ€™s started doingโ€ฆ what now? This works as a curiosity gap headline because itโ€™s, one, attention-grabbing and bizarre, and two, the headline doesnโ€™t give us the reason why this famous restaurant-chain started doing this bizarre thing.

Why did they start putting cameras in dumpsters? I guess Iโ€™ll have to click to settle my curiosity.

The Writing Cooperative curiosity example
The Writing Cooperative

This is another good example because the headline fails to tell its readers the reason point A led to point B (a.k.a. Whatโ€™s the technical glitch? Why is it happening?). However, readers will know that there is a simple solution to this problem if they just give the article a 6-minute read.

Using power words, like โ€œsimpleโ€, boosts your chances of readers engaging with your content because it triggers action and grabs their attention.

You can find useful words like this in the offered headline template bundle, from the beginning of the post. Download this bundle now, so you can expand your curiosity gap vocabulary.

[Tweet “Using power words in your headlines boosts your chances of readers engaging with your content.”]

Curiosity Gaps: Doโ€™s and Donโ€™ts

Weโ€™ve already covered a few of the things we like to see and what we should avoid in curiosity gaps, but letโ€™s dive a little deeper and talk about what else to watch out for.

What You Should Be Doing

The do's of creating curiosity gaps

Using a curiosity gap as part of your content strategy is not always super straightforward. There are a few things to keep in mind when you decide to use them as your method to capturingย the attention of an audience.

Weโ€™ll start with the obvious: you need to make your target audience curious โ€” hence, the name. If your content doesnโ€™t make someone scratch their head and think, โ€œI have no idea, but Iโ€™d like to find out,โ€ then youโ€™re doing it wrong.

Itโ€™s important to leave things open-ended because then youโ€™ve given yourself a nice platform to creatively resolve your audienceโ€™s curiosity throughout your content.

Next, you need to make you actually settle your audienceโ€™s curiosity. If you give them something unknown and then donโ€™t give them the answer, youโ€™ll completely lose their trust. This is where our previous discussion about clickbait comes into play. Never, and I mean never, trick your audience into falling for clickbait. This is the easiest way to lose your followers.

Finally, the last thing you should do to properly form a curiosity gap is to be creative but clear. Using the same old, cookie-cutter stuff in your curiosity gap will most definitely lose your audienceโ€™s interest.

Andrew Davis said it best:

Andrew Davis quote about customer attention span

Attention isnโ€™t just given to you, your content, or your brand; it needs to be earned.

What You Should Avoid

The don'ts of creating curiosity gaps

Letโ€™s start this off our list of โ€œdonโ€™tsโ€ by referencing Andrew Davisโ€™s quote about customer attention. With all of the information out there, and the updates that push through feed every second, thereโ€™s a window of only a few seconds to capture the attention of your audience.

That being said, itโ€™s critical that you donโ€™t give your audience extra information or advertisement that they wonโ€™t care about.

Why?

When someone is on a mission to find out the answer to a burning question โ€” put there by your content โ€” they donโ€™t want to be roadblocked by flourishes of ads and extra fluff. Theyโ€™re there for one purpose and one purpose only: to find an answer.

Our second and third โ€œdonโ€™tsโ€ will, again, put a spotlight on clickbait. Two things we really want to avoid with curiosity gaps are using this curiosity gap method to promote fake news and/or over exaggerating your content.

Promoting fake newsย is the easiest way to lose the authenticity of your brand and chase away any potential customers. When you promote anything that canโ€™t be trusted, your audience will, in turn, not trust you. We donโ€™t want that.

Over exaggerating your content goes hand-in-hand with this because if you hype up your company or content too much, you risk being untruthful.

Overall, just make sure you are honest, interesting, and brief when you decide to take on a curiosity gap as your next content strategy.

[Tweet “Be honest, interesting, and brief when you decide to take on a curiosity gap as your next content strategy.”]

How to Apply Curiosity Gaps

There are a few ways to incorporate curiosity gaps into your content, like the CoSchedule headline examples we talked about previously. However, sometimes it can be really difficult to think of how to structure your headline or other content in a way that works best alongside the psychology of curiosity.

Take a peek at a simple formula our trusted friend, Andrew Davis, has constructed for making this content strategy as easy user-friendly as possible.

The Storybox Formula

The storybox formula

Davis has some great advice for how to effectively compose content curiosity gaps. The Storybox Formula, however, is a method that can be broken down into a few, easy-to-follow steps:

  • Show what the audience wants: This is pretty straightforward, but you need to make sure youโ€™re clearly showing the audience what service you are offering to them and how it can benefit them. They donโ€™t want to see what your product or service is until you tell them how they can use it and how it helps them.
  • Challenge solutions: Reassure your audience that you understand their problem, and then immediately follow up with the solution you can offer that will solve that problem.
  • Show potential outcomes: Lay out what your solution will do for their end results. Hereโ€™s the trick: as Davis puts it, โ€œdelay the reveal.โ€ As soon as your audience knows the answer, they wonโ€™t be paying attention anymore. Remember, you need to keep them curious!
  • Reinforce results: Once you finally give your audience the solution theyโ€™re looking for, donโ€™t forget to tell them whyย your solution is a good one. This goes hand-in-hand with showing the potential outcomes โ€” except, this time, youโ€™re giving them the actualย solution.

Be sure to check out Andrew Davisโ€™s podcast interview with CoSchedule to dig even deeper into this strategy.

Using CoScheduleโ€™s Headline Analyzer

The Headline Analyzer is an easy-to-use tool that will have you cranking out your best headlines in no time.

The first step is entering your headline idea into the text box, and then clicking โ€œAnalyze Nowโ€.

CoSchedule's Headline Analyzer

After this tool analyzes your headline, youโ€™ll get tons of feedback about how your headline would perform and engage readers and where it might fall a little flat. The Headline Analyzer will score your headline out of 100 โ€” anything above a score of 70 will land you in the green, which is where we aim for our headlines at CoSchedule.Headline Analyzer headline scores

Some of the feedback youโ€™ll see from the Headline Analyzer will talk about your word balance, headline type, and your sentiment. Keep this feedback in mind while you continue to draft headline ideas and craft one thatโ€™s sure to make an impact.Headline Analyzer headline feedback

With our headline template bundle and this handy-dandy Headline Analyzer tool in your marketing toolbelt, youโ€™re prepped and ready to draft the next perfect headline.

Itโ€™s Your Turn

With that, Iโ€™ll leave you to try out this content strategy on your own. Donโ€™t forget to take advantage of the downloadable headline template bundle, so you can make the most of your headlines and capture the attention of your target audience.

Happy writing!

The post How to Use Curiosity Gaps to Write Headlines People Must Click appeared first on CoSchedule Blog.