10 reasons you should stop threatening people with your headlines
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I don’t know about you, but I hate the culture of fear and fear-mongering that we have created in our society. It’s a stream of constantly negative news coming at us from all directions, and it’s led to a culture of fear, stress, and anxiety. I’m all for finding ways to get people to read your latest blog post or article, but there’s just something that bothers me about using threatening headlines to achieve this. I don’t think this needs to be the case. I don’t think we live in a world where we have to be watching our backs every second. We need to be aware, yes, and cautious at times, but we don’t need to be in a constant state of panic. This is why, when I’m looking through my feed of latest articles written on Social Media, Writing, Blogging, Business Strategy, etc, I hate to see threatening headlines such as “X Mistakes You’re Making On X”. It seems to me that all of a sudden we are do this wrong, or we suck at that, or we need to stop doing this, or we’re missing out on that. Why do we need to create a feeling of fear or lacking or insufficiency in order to get someone to read our blog post? Why do we need to perpetuate the feeling of scarcity and “fear of missing out”? Especially in the world of Social Media, Writing, Blogging, Business Strategy, etc. Is what we’re doing so important that we need to create a state of panic or anxiety, or the feeling of “not being good enough”? There is always room for improvement, there is no doubt about that. Everyone makes mistakes. But why play on people’s weaknesses in order to garner attention? Why do we have to be made to feel like we are stupid or are lacking or are not good enough in order to read what the author has to say? This is a trend in today’s society that we need to become more aware of and push back on. No matter what you are doing, you are already good enough. There is no one right way to do things. The purpose of reading articles online is to gain different insights and ideas in order to improve upon yourself or your product. The purpose should not be to make you feel bad about yourself. We all need to stop using threatening headlines as a tool to gain attention for our blog posts. Yes, they may achieve a certain amount of attention when they appear in Google Search, but let’s think about the bigger picture. Wouldn’t you rather live in a world that is constructive and helpful and forgiving? Let’s give a helping hand instead of knocking someone down. I think in the long run this will make us all better. What are your thoughts on using threatening headlines? Do you use them? Do you like them? Link to original article - http://www.brookeboser.com/10-reasons-stop-threatening-people-headlines/TRANSCRIPT
