Creating engaging social media posts

Writing simple headlines is easier than you think! Sitting there being taunted by a motionless cursor. Here’s a way to re-frame your approach when creating engaging social media posts!

We see a headline as your first interaction with the customer. This includes anything from the opening line of a voiceover, a heading on social media, or the headline to a simple ad campaign.

Cracking headlines

We consider all of these to be cracking headlines (spoiler: they’re all the opening lines to songs).*

It’s been a hard day’s night

Nice to meet you, where you been?

Load up on guns, bring your friends

At first, I was afraid, I was petrified

Sometimes you’re better off dead

Hey, Macklemore? Can we go thrift shopping?

Yeah, they wishin’ and wishin’ and wishin’ and wishin’

There’s a stranger in my bed

They’re cracking because they make you curious.

It’s been a hard day’s night

(Why?)

Nice to meet you, where you been?

(Where have they been?)

Load up on guns, bring your friends

(What the hell is going on?)

At first, I was afraid, I was petrified

(Why? What happened to change this?)

Sometimes you’re better off dead

(OMG, what’s happened?)

Hey Macklemore? Can we go thrift shopping?

(What’s going to happen when we do?)

Yeah, they wishin’ and wishin’ and wishin’ and wishin’

(What are they wishing and why?)

There’s a stranger in my bed

(I have so many questions!)

Curiouser and curiouser

You see, if you can generate curiosity with a few words (or images) then, unconsciously, your viewer will be drawn in to your content. We just can’t help ourselves when we’re in a motivated state – and that’s because of our lizard brains.

Every living thing within the animal kingdom seeks information about the environment around them. Our ears, eyes, noses – in fact, the whole of our sensory systems – feed the brain with the necessary information to understand the local environment and make choices.

This is a stage known by psychologists as ‘information seeking’. However, if something unexpected attracts our attention that fails to evoke recognition or knowledge of the outcome. As Peter Carruthers explains in his (2018) work The Contents and Causes of Curiosity:’

“How is curiosity caused? Most likely it begins with a prediction-error (surprise). Something unexpected happening will attract attention. This is not yet curiosity, but more like an orienting response. However, if the item / event is appraised as somehow relevant to the creature’s interests or concerns, and yet fails to evoke recognition or knowledge of the outcome, then the result will be an affective state with a content such as, what that is, or, what will happen, which motivates (and provides an urge towards) investigative behavior.”

So, for example, if you hear a noise you don’t recognise, your “lizard brain” kicks in and puts you in fight or flight mode. If the source of that sound turns out to pose no immediate threat, your curiosity kicks in. How many thrillers have you watched and screamed “don’t open the door!!” at? Or heard something in the middle of the night and HAD to get up to check?

And this works with words, too. We are compelled to fill that information gap. Many cognitive scientists define curiosity as an emotional, motivational state that embeds questions as to the contents of the unknown, and we can see this in the examples above.

“Why has it been a hard day’s night?”

“If you were petrified at first – what happened next?”

Creating curiosity

In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr gives us the key to creating curiosity:

“Unexpected change is a portal through which danger arrives to swipe at our throats. Paradoxically, however, change is also an opportunity. It’s the crack in the universe through which the future arrives.”

“When unexpected change strikes, we want to know what does it mean? Is this change for the good or bad? Unexpected change makes us curious”.

Pick up any good book and look at the opening line, and you’ll see this in practice:

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

The Crow Road by Iain Banks (1992)

“You better not never tell nobody but God.”

The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)

“All children, except one, grow up.”

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (1904)

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915) (translations differ)

“Marley was dead, to begin with.”

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843)

“If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.”

A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (2006)

Rewarding curiosity

What’s fabulous about this curiosity state is that it gets rewarded. When your curiosity is satisfied, your body releases dopamine, making you happy. So, think about what questions your headline has raised and answer them in the rest of the content.

In short:

Do not use this formula to rule your life as it could also look like this: