Your title should not promise things that your post does not fulfill. (3/3)

Your title should not promise things that your post does not fulfill. In other words, don’t title your article “A Cure for Cancer is Found!” and then proceed to write an article about the dishonesty of pharmaceutical companies. People will be angry they have been lied to in order to get them to click on your article link. Dishonesty is never a good idea when it comes to titles. Some people think that any click is a good click but that is not true, as the people will leave as soon as they realize the article is not going to deliver what the title promised and your bounce rate will soar.

They may also remember your name, if you make a habit of this, and they will stop clicking on anything you write. Some bloggers think that none of these things are important. They feel that what they write should be their own style and should not have to adhere to the rules of good writing. That is one thing about having your own blog to write; you can do whatever you want, and write however you want. This school of thinking is neglecting to take one basic factor into consideration. When a person writes publicly, they are generally writing for their readers, and not for themselves. This has always been an important tenet of published writing.

Do you think that with the popularity of blogs that this fundamental precept is no longer valid?  Do writers still write for their readers, or do they write for themselves without a care as to what possible readers will like?

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