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How’s that for a headline?! Brian Clark is clearly doing too good of a job because I’m seeing so many creative and attention-getting headlines like:

• The Ultimate Guide to [blank]
• 12 Sure-Fire Ways to [blank]
• The Secret of [blank]

And therein lies my beef.

The “Ultimate” guide turns out to be less than ultimate. The “12 Sure-Fire” ways aren’t very “sure-fire”. And the “Secret” of [blank] wasn’t such a big secret and was actually quite a letdown.

Does anyone remember some famous marketer say that he would reveal “The Single Biggest Mistake You Could Make That Will Doom Your Online Business Before It Even Gets Off The Ground”? And the only way you could find out was to purchase his $247 package of marketing materials?

Well I sure did! And bought his package I did too! Express delivery thank you very much! And then… I found out what his big “Secret” was (with a capital “S“). I’m going to reveal it to you now…

It was… (drum roll please)… “Not Researching Your Market Before You Start Your Online Business”!

Ok, I admit it was an important point to make but, seriously, wasn’t it a little over-hyped? Boy, did I ever have a let-down! If it wasn’t such a hassle to return the whole package, I probably would have. I was like, “Gee, thanks for giving me some really useful advice pal (not).” Not only was it over-hyped, it also wasn’t particularly helpful in terms of laying out the steps on how I was to research my market.

To the point of this post–using attention-grabbing headlines but then underdelivering on the content will kill your blog’s reputation. How many times did you click on a blog posting with a juicy, watery, itching to be clicked headline… only to be disappointed in the content when you clicked through and read the post? I’m sure I’m not the only one.

And the feeling I got was “how fast can I hit the ‘Back’ button so I can get the hella outta here!” That blog and whoever posted it was mud to me. I will never visit or link to that blog in my entire blogging life.

Not exactly the kind of feeling you want to convey to your visitors. But, I see a lot of blogs do this–overhype and underdeliver. If you are going to use an attention grabbing headline, make sure you really have the content to back it up. There’s nothing more disappointing to your visitor than feeling like a sucker for clicking through. For example, if you are rehashing advice you saw in six other places, it ain’t a “Secret” anymore!

Also, please don’t over-do it with the attention-grabbing headlines even if you do think you are giving the most awesome advice, secrets, whatever, out in the blogosphere. Because there is nothing worse than going to a blog and seeing nothing but attention-grabbing headlines everywhere. The feeling it conveys is like being at a flea market where you are the only customer and there are a thousand eager-to-take-your-money sellers pitching their products.

One last thing, the best posts with attention-grabbing headlines are the ones that, in addition to delivering on the goods, also make the reader feel that if the advice didn’t work for him, it was because of something he, the visitor, did or didn’t do and not the other way around.

Your thoughts? I would really appreciate some examples of great posts that use attention-grabbing headlines. (I’d rather not embarrass anyone so please don’t post comments that identify poor posts!)

Want to know what else will kill your blog–head over to Problogger for Darren’s list of 10 mistakes that will kill your blog.

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