When reading headlines, be sure to pay attention to the headline’s placement, in the body of the article, and how words are chosen to speak to the reader. Here’s a collection of misleading headlines that are common on the Web.
So many of the headlines are misleading because they don’t actually say what they are. Sometimes they’re misleading because they make your eyes hurt, and other times they’re misleading because they make your head hurt.
We use the term “misleading” to describe headlines which are confusing (“Apple iPhone was launched last night,”) misleading (“Taco Bell has a new line of tacos,”) or misleading because they’re not accurate (“The Apple iPhones were launched last night”).
The problem with misleading headlines is that the whole idea of headlines is to tell people what you are about. If your headline is misleading, then you are not being about what you are about in the first place. The Apple iPhone was launched last night is not about the iPhone. In fact it is misleading because at no point do you say that.
The problem with misleading headlines is that they do not accurately represent what the headline is about. Yes you can read a headline like “The Apple iPhone was launched last night,” but in reality, it is misleading.
When you have misleading headlines, you are not being about what you are about. You are just being about a marketing ploy.
That’s not the goal. A misleading headline is not a marketing ploy. A marketing ploy is when you take marketing tactics from a newspaper and apply them to a website. The headline and the text for the article are in fact the same thing. The goal of the headline is to make the reader think the article is about the iPhone, and that’s exactly what it is. What the headline is about is marketing tactics.
In the case of the iPhone, you have a marketing tactic that is simply repackaging the iPhone’s marketing tactics. You are actually repackaging the iPhone’s marketing tactics into the headline. You have actually repackaged the iPhone’s marketing tactics into the headline.
As you can see, the headline doesn’t even mention the iPhone, which is an extremely bad choice for a headline. Not only is it misleading, but it’s also bad form. Using your own marketing tactics to do something that is not even a direct and direct marketing tactic is just bad form, and an example of the type of promotional material you don’t want.
We have been trying to get this right for a few weeks now and we think its finally starting to come together. We have a few articles that I think are really strong though, and we just dont want to just leave them there. We are trying to make a bigger deal out of it and make it seem as though we are putting our reputation on the line.