This 3-min Checklist Creates Viral Headlines

The Write10x headline checklist + The 3✅ Rule

Image generated by Author through ChatGPT. Checklist placed at the center, surrounded by metallic icons such as megaphones, charts, and thought bubbles

Headlines are your first point of contact with your article. The fashion statement of your ideas.

Thus, headlines have a critical in getting your audience to click. Good headlines should have:

• A balance between logic, emotion, and urgency

• Psychological elements that make it enticing

• A strong element of curiosity

Great headlines are what drove my Medium audienceship to about 12k, with thousands of monthly reads.

And it’s not just important in your personal blog. The principles of great titles are essential for other creations: book titles, YouTube titles, research papers, etc. Whenever you want to grab attention, these principles are what you should do.

So, this will be very useful to you.

The Write10x Headline Checklist

This is what I call the checklist I use to create headlines. I have since seen an increase in performance for all my other articles.

This template:

• Helps you write headlines faster

• Decreases cognitive load

• Boosts your chances of going viral

Topic checklist

This is how you know if the article you’re creating has massive potential.

• Is it in a broad topic, but sufficiently narrow niche?

• Is it controversial?

• Is it a strong opinion?

• Is it personal?

• Is it a unique premise?

Headline elements checklist

These specific headline elements will make your headlines more effective.

• Did you name the target audience?

• Did you state the benefit?

• Did you include emotional elements?

• Did you include power words?

• Did you include numbers?

• Does the first and last 3 words convey 70% of your content?

The Three-Check Rule

Don’t worry, your topic and headline don’t need to have everything. You don’t need to check every box, simply having 3 of those elements for each category is enough.

I call this the three-check rule.

Example:

Here’s how the checklist applies.

Topic:

• Broad topic, narrow niche (broad topic: editing, narrow niche: editing work to make it less AI-sounding)

• Controversial (a writer being “pro-AI”)

• Personal (based on my personal experience, ensuring it is human)

• Unique premise (based on my own ideas and perspective)

Headline elements:

• Target audience (not explicitly named, but specifically implied)

• Benefit is stated (humanizing writing)

• Number elements (1 principle, 1 framework, 0% AI — 99% of the time!)

Final thoughts

This is the formula I’m using to create articles that stand out.

It’s also a cross-post of an article from my Medium account, I’ll do that sometimes.

Hope it helps.

That’s it for today.

Talk more soon,

James.