5 Proven Headline Formats I Use For My Medium Stories To Go Viral

Want to go viral? Learn how to create headlines

The headline makes or breaks your story.

Imagine this: You just come across an idea about why the sunset is important for health. So you sit down to write. You start typing on the keyboard. And after 3 hours, you finish writing the story.

Now it’s time for you to write the headline because you haven’t written the headline. Unfortunately, you don’t know how to write “Killer Headlines,” so you just put “Why I like sunsets.”

And because your headline sucks, all you get is crickets.

But what if you write the same headline and change it to “10 Reasons You Should Make Time for Sunset Every Single Day if You Want to Live Longer?”

Probably this headline would get thousands of clicks to your story, right?

That’s how powerful headlines are.

So today, I’m going to tell you the 5 headline types I use that help me go viral every now and then.

Let’s dive in:

1. How To → How I Did

This is by far the best headline hack I’ve come across.

It’s easier to write “How-to” stories. But it’s pretty hard to write “How I did” stories. Because if you haven’t done the “Work,” you can’t just put “How I did” in the headline. Makes sense?

But if you can write “How I did” stories, you’ll have all the eyeballs you want.

When you write “How I did” stories, they automatically become an inspiration for other people. People want to learn from the person who’s done the work, not from someone who’s writing “How-to” stories.

Here are some of the stories I’ve written in this format:

2. Experience Umbrell

This is my second-best headline format.

In this headline format, you talk about your experience and knowledge. These headlines work the same as “How I did” headlines because they show your personality and personal learning.

Now let me show you what are the things you can create in this headline format.

Well, pretty much anything that comes under your personal experiences.

For example:

• The lesson you learned
• The mistake you made
• Advice you’d give to your past-self
• I wish I had known this sooner…

And much more.

Here are some of the stories that I’ve written in this format (you’ll find that I’ve also used numbers to make the headline more effective):

3. Contrarian Take

These types of headlines always tend to go viral.

If I want to create this type of story or want to write the headline in this format, first I ask myself “What do most people get wrong about X and what’s the reality?” And after I state my take on that.

Contrarian take is basically you go in the opposite direction. If everyone is going in the north direction, you go south. You got it?

The reason why these types of headlines work is because when you write them, people find them either new, unique, or different. And so they can’t help but share your story.

Here are some of the stories I’ve written in this format:

4. Truth Seeker

There are some universal truths that you can’t deny.

And that’s what works so well on Medium. If I say “You’re gonna die one day.” You can’t deny the fact that you’re gonna die one day so you’ll accept it.

The headline does the same job.

Sometimes I tell some hard truth that a writer must know. So when you tell these truths people accept them and thank you for telling the truth.

However, they already know the truth but you just have to remind them.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Alex Hormozi.

“We need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.”

Here are some of the stories I’ve written in this format:

5. Listicles

Numbers always work.

Put any number in the headline, and I guarantee you’d have a 10% more click-through rate. It’s the most used headline format in the online space. Not only in the digital space but also in the offline world.

The reason why it works is that people love numbers. People don’t want to know vague things. They want the exact thing with the exact quantity.

Let me give you a quick example.

If you say: “Reasons I read books every day.” Probably this headline wouldn’t get the clicks you expect. But if you write the headline “5 Strong Reasons I Read Books Every Day.”

Pretty hard, right?

This headline can get decent clicks if not go viral. So yeah, people want to know the number.

Here are some of the stories I’ve written in this format:

Also, the story you’re reading right now is written based on this headline format lol.

If you want to grow and make money on Medium, check out this story:

How To Grow And Make Money On Medium In 2024

Thanks for reading!