All categories/Writing and copy
Level Starter · Titles Angles Copy
Ten titles: criteria before candidates
The draft is done and every title you invent sounds the same.
Prompt
Write titles for this article.
It is about: {{content}}
Platform: {{platform}}
Reader: {{audience}}
Banned words: {{banned}}
Step 1: write 3 criteria for what gets opened and what gets scrolled past on this platform. No titles yet.
Step 2: give 10 titles against those criteria, covering question, specific number, counter-intuitive, identity call-out and outcome-led.
Step 3: tag each with a risk (overclaim, clickbait, mismatch with body) and pick the 2 safest with reasons.What to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- {{content}}: two or three lines, ideally the opening paragraph
- {{platform}}: blog / forum / in-app / email subject
- {{audience}}: who scrolls past it
- {{banned}}: absolutes, house style bans
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- Criteria before candidates stops ten titles sounding like one.
- The risk column is your own gate; keep it.