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Friday, March 20th, 2009

How Digg​.com Can Razor-​​Sharpen Your Headlines

How Digg​.com Can Razor-​​Sharpen Your Headlines

Digging in the DirtIf you chec­ked out my pre­vious post, “Websites That Write Your Salesletter For You,” I recom­men­ded Digg​.com as one of the sites to help you write bet­ter head­li­nes and create bet­ter hooks in sales copy.

Spe­ci­fi­cally, find popu­lar news sto­ries that grab atten­tion, and model your head­li­nes based on them using word-​​substitution.

For exam­ple: when I go to the site Digg​.com and choose a ran­dom headline…

“The Dan­gers of Not Drinking”

I can turn that into a head­line for myself.

That article title took something con­si­de­red to be bad (drin­king) and found a way to tell you that NOT doing it… is dan­ge­rous in some ways. The sub­ject in this head­line is “drin­king”… so you can just change the word “drin­king” into something that’s com­monly thought to be bad.

For exam­ple, in the weight loss niche, you might say, “The Dan­gers of Not Eating Des­sert!” In the pay-​​per-​​click niche: “The Dan­gers of Bid­ding Too Low!” All those head­li­nes demand that peo­ple read on.

Check Digg.com once per day and copy down the three or four most attention-​​grabbing or fun­niest head­li­nes you see. This will not only build up your swipe file, but will also make the head­line wri­ting pro­cess intui­tive for you.

How about a cou­ple other great head­li­nes I found?

  • 5 Peo­ple Who Broke the Rules of Social Media and Succeeded
  • Man Steals Car to Get to Court on Time
  • The Death Penalty for Porn
  • Man Arres­ted Trying to Smug­gle Wife In A Spea­ker Box

Here’s how you make the Digg swipe file pro­cess a daily acti­vity. If you’re using the Fire­fox brow­ser to Digg, click the orange RSS icon to subsc­ribe to that feed, and save it into your Book­marks Tool­bar… NOT the book­marks folder.

This will add a but­ton to your brow­ser that you can click at any time, and read the list of head­li­nes without actually rea­ding the artic­les or visi­ting any web pages where it might dis­tract you.

Add the RSS feed to your browser’s tool­bar and take three minu­tes out of your day to write the best five Digg​.com head­li­nes of the day so you can become a mas­ter head­line wri­ter… and even if you don’t want to wait that long, you can still use word substitution.

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  • Robert - shame, shame for giving away these secrets!!

    I love Digg as a spy tool...I use it to find niche market ideas, copywriting ideas (as you mention) and angles for getting my syndicated content picked up by the directories and social networking sites -- great article man!

    Jeff
  • I stumbled upon a similar resource ( admittedly an old resource)
    .A list of the most frequently "dug" words. You will find it under "Attention grabbing words".
  • Oh great, so now we'll get to see even more copycat formulaic headlines and articles.

    Wunderbar.
  • It still amazes me that it is the 'obvious' and 'simple' tips that most people miss and yet you'll wonder how you ever lived without it once you know.

    Thanks for sharing this one!

    Karl
  • Ya Digg is a great resource for headlines.... thanks for sharing the info, now I know where I can get great headline for my swipe files collection !

    The Bad Blogger
  • Tom
    Robert, this digg.com headline swipe file is good. I need these "What the Barber Said to the Bald Guy." And "Blind Accountant Finds Tax Loophole." type headlines. Good job.
  • Thanks Robert...I always liked browsing through Digg and it didn't 'click' why until now. Thanks...you're absolutely right, Digg is an archive of some of the best short headlines in the world!
    I won't forget this :)

    Stuart Stirling
  • I would love to clone Robert's mind. It is a phenomenal repository of great marketing ideas. It's hard to keep up with him because of his fast-paced productivity. He has become one of my top three mentors in Internet Marketing.

    Thanks to Michel and Sylvie for putting his ideas on the "Marketer's Board"

    Terrie
  • Thanks, Robert - what a great tip! It constantly amazes me how many simple and easy ways there are to connect with my market that I just don't think of.

    SaRita
  • You don't have to go to Digg for this. Yahoo is the most visited website, is written and edited by pros (Digg is user based), and has sharper headlines, some of which attract phenomenal response
  • Leon, any news site will work and I have been alternating having Google News and Yahoo! RSS buttons in my firefox toolbar but Digg always has more specific and funny headlines than any other site I have tried.
  • Great tip! I've always found the best way to become a better marketer is to "copy" what is already working for others.
  • I have heard of Digg but I will be checking it out now as I had not visited that site . Thanks for the info. THere is so much to know about being online. I really appreciate that your link was shared via twitter (how I found you). I am amazed that compared to hair shows (where lots of platform artists who share what they know) this is such an eye opener and I find that blogs like this promote growth and insight into what you can do to improve what you do!
    Thank You for sharing what YOU know!
    Rebecca
  • Wow, that was a really good post and an excellent tip.

    I've been working harder than ever to come up with eye grabbing copy and this tip will definitely come in handy.

    Btw, you're blog looks great. You guys always set the standard.


    Have a good one.

    Cheers,
    Nando
  • Never thought of using Digg for headline swipe. I'm checking out Technorati as well. I don't digg regularly. Sometimes, article headlines from Yahoo and MSN can be useful as well.
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