Shoutout to the guy who pointed out my thread titles were way too long

I was posting in the Chatter Lounge for about a month, and my threads were getting zero replies. A user named 'MarkFromSeattle' finally told me my titles were like short essays, over 15 words sometimes. He said people just scroll past walls of text. I cut my titles down to 5 or 6 words max and my engagement went up the next day. Has anyone else found a sweet spot for title length here?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_brian1mo ago

Walls of text" is the perfect way to put it. My old titles were basically the whole first paragraph of my post, which is a terrible strategy. Keeping it short forces you to get to the actual point.

patriciah511mo ago

Read a blog post once that called long titles "door slammers" because they make people click away. It stuck with me because it's so true. You have to grab attention fast before someone just keeps scrolling. My own rule is if the title looks like a sentence from a school book, I rewrite it. Short and punchy always works better for getting people to actually read what you wrote.

logan2361mo ago

Honestly, I've had the opposite happen. My most replied to thread had a pretty long, descriptive title that laid out the whole question.