Wednesday, August 17, 2011

What You Really Need To Know About Creating a Headline For Your Online Dating Profile

This article is a long one, but it's well worth the read. Guys, listen up:

The headline is where most of us blow it. Forget everything you think works in a headline, everything you've ever read, and everything your friends tell you. The majority of it is BS. Read what's coming here, and you'll be way ahead of everyone else.

Along with your main profile picture, the headline is the first thing women look at, and it doesn't even have to be good to draw women in. Yeah, I know that doesn't make sense and it goes against what everyone else is saying.

Let me explain. The fact is that your headline isn't going to get women to respond to you; you just have to make sure that it isn't so bad that it keeps them from reading your profile.

When we used popular, catchy, cute, funny, or romantic headlines the number of women who contacted us dropped€which meant that everything we'd ever read on headlines was wrong.

Your pictures are what are going to get them to look further, and the headline can prevent this. So, keep the headline simple.

But I thought I was supposed to be different...

Yeah, it's a good idea to separate yourself from the crowd, and you can do that in the headline but it's too risky so early in the process. You ARE going to show your uniqueness, but you're going to wait a little bit. Get your hooks in first.

The problem is that there are principles that apply in attraction that people misapply when writing their headlines.

Qualifying a woman is a necessary step in attracting any woman, but attempting to qualify in the headline always backfires.

Headlines like "Yeah, you're beautiful, but what else do you have going for you?" Or "What do you have to offer?" are written and proposed by wannabe players and guys who don't understand how to apply the principles of attraction. These guys just come off as rude, arrogant and socially inept. She has no reason to qualify herself to you yet.

You will make her qualify herself to you, but you need to lay the groundwork first and build attraction, otherwise you're going to get blown out right away. You have to get her interested first. You're going to make your headline innocuous, build attraction in the profile, and ask her to qualify herself in her first response to you. Sometimes she will, sometimes she won't, but either way you win because you've shown her that you're selective and expect a lot from your women.

How about making a connection immediately with a movie quote or famous quote? Don't do it. Yes, it creates an immediate shared interest, and shared interests do bond people, but this is another case of misapplying basic principles.

The problem with movie quotes, quotes from famous people, or your favorite mantra is that they weed out people who might be interested in you if they'd gotten far enough to read your profile. But they didn't identify with the quote and clicked right by you.

Using your headline as a screening process.

With that said, there might be times when you want to use your headline so it selects for a certain kind of woman or someone with a particular interest.

If you only want to date Trekkies, go ahead and put a Star Trek quote in your headline.

Likewise, if you are looking for something specific, say a third for you and your girlfriend, a headline that says "Hot couple looking for a third." is going get women who are already looking for a threesome to respond.

But if you can get someone to read your profile, and mention in the profile that you're looking for a third, you are going to be able to get women who weren't initially interested in a threesome to consider it. Opens up a world of possiblities, doesn't it?

Using your headline to attract someone with common interests.

Headlines like "Cook looking for a taste tester," and "marathon runner looking for a partner," drew in the second most responses, so they work. And they have the advantage of attracting someone with a common interest. We didn't test these as much as we did some other headlines, so the data are not as clear-cut. But we think that if you're going to write a headline on your own, common interest headlines are a good start.

Obviously, the number of women who respond is going to go down, but that might be compensated by the fact that you have a certain connection with those who do. Also, we had women who wrote to us even though they didn't share an interest we listed in our headline. They would say, "I don't paraglide, but wanted to reply anyway€".

So what are the best headlines?

We tested all kinds of original headlines and variations of what other people told us worked for them to give you the ones that either converted the best or didn't have a negative effect on the results.

In general, questions were good. The ones that worked the best for us either asked a simple question, challenged the woman, or both.

The best one we found: "Are you there?"

We're not sure why it works. The only reason we even tried it was because we saw that Google was using it as their headline to get people to sign up for their advertising. We figured if it was good enough for Google, it was good enough for us.

Other good ones are:

Think you can keep up?

Up for a challenge?

Real man here€

Down to earth€

Isn't it about time?

It's about time

Not for the faint of heart€

Coming up with your own headline.

If you're going to go out on your own here, remember to keep it safe. Don't go out on a limb and differentiate yourself from the crowd yet.

Or, go with a common interest headline and look for someone who shares your passions.

Don't do the following:

Okay, this comes from talking to hundreds of women in person or on the phone. These are their pet peeves, in no particular order.

1. Misspellings. Be especially careful of there, their and they're, and you're and your (and it's kinda funny because some of the women who told us they didn't like misspellings had them in their profiles).

2. Writing your profile like a text message: R U there? Let's get 2gether. Looking 4 luv.

3. Being arrogant in the headline. Women thought that those qualifying headlines made the guy sound arrogant.

That about sums up what you need to know about writing your headline, so get out there and get to work!

JT

For more tips from JT, check out www.online-dating-mastery.com


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