Headlines and thumbnail images are your biggest attention assets!

What good is having great content if nobody opens your article?!?!?!

It's important to remember that when most people come across your post, it's in a huge list of other posts (in a feed, a steemit chat promotion room, a discord promotion room, etc.) Now think of yourself staring at a huge list of posts...which ones do YOU click on? Unless you happen to already know the author, this decision is heavily influenced by the headline and/or thumbnail image catching your attention!

Often there is that one post that seemed to 'pop' for you with many others seeming to have a rather lackluster response. Likely it will be that way for you for a while. But the goal for most of us in the end are to consistently improve our payouts and there are some strategies you can try to help move you towards this. So this guide covers choosing strong headlines and images for your thumbnail to entice more people to actually open your post, ideally bringing your greater success over time on Steemit!

Q: What makes a Headline catch someone's attention?

Think about what makes you click on things. Is there a certain word or topic that got you interested? Maybe it posed a question you wanted an answer for?

As an example...say you have a post showing off some pictures of flowers you took. Which headline grabs you more?

1. Some cool flowers

2. Overtaken by Nature's Beauty

Now I know this is kind of a cheesy example. But can you tell the difference? I'd guess that the second one got more of your attention...like you want to see what is being discussed. This is what you are shooting for! Using strong actions and descriptions go a LONG way. It's also important to remember that the first words in your post also show up in this list view under the headline and thumbnail image. You can use these to you're advantage too!

I know it's not always the easiest thing to come up with strong catchy headlines, but working on it over time will help you improve. If you find a post doesn't get much attention, try to think what you might have done to make it more appealing to click on (even though sometimes you might have just gotten unlucky and there wasn't much to improve on the headline.)

While I don't recommend relying on this...if you find yourself stuck, you can use a Title Generator to get some ideas. Most of them are rather lame, but often you'll find one that sticks out as something worth a try.

Lastly, try to pay attention to what headlines get your attention! Was it a certain word or phrase that drew you in? Maybe it was the thumbnail image they used?

Q: What makes a Thumbnail image catch someone's attention?

We again want to remember that all our posts are first seen in a list view. So we need something that sticks out and makes somebody want to open the post for a better look. Let's jump right into an example...which of these two pictures grab your attention more?

This one:

or this one?

[IMPORTANT: Your FIRST image in a post will be used for the thumbnail image! So choose it carefully.]

I made these pictures smaller so we can get a better idea of what they look like in a thumbnail image. I'd bet that every one of you were drawn to the second one, whether because of the brighter color, greater details or some other reason. The first one, while also a picture of a flower, just doesn't have the same appeal with the actual flower being so small and the grass around it being rather full.

I know we don't always have the pictures we want available from shots you took yourself. So don't be afraid to use a google image search with the usage rights set to "Labeled for reuse"...since we make money off our posts and want to respect copywrites. Some other sites with images you are safe to use include Pexels, Pixabay or Unsplash just to name a few.

A Few Final Thoughts...

Finding a great headline and thumbnail image isn't always the easiest thing to do. So don't be afraid to just try different things, maybe even ask someone else for their opinion. This is something that has to be developed over time. But even for the best of us, things don't 'pop' as much as we though they would.