“Stranger Than Paradise” — or: What Headlines Can Do for Attracting Attention
“Stranger than Paradise” is the title of a movie by a famous and award-winning director of actual art: Jim Jarmusch. Of course, titles are about attention, too. But not all about marketing. In a world with hundreds of thousands of blog entries, posts, comments, newsletters, and user fora entries published practically every second, the unusual ‘’does it’.
If a headline attracts the readers’ attention — and seems perhaps even strange, chances are that they actually will hit the button — and read. Or watch the movie.
Of course, also, it’s about context: In a strictly professional business context you would sometimes have to avoid this. It depends on culture too, though: Some regions these days prefer the idea of an ‘open, casual’ business atmosphere, epitome being perhaps Google’s reported working environment.
I feel I should add this too: In many parts of this world it is considered ‘bad form’ to attract attention.
I was raised on the idea that it is about art — and about being authentic. The techniques of how to write well are rather old. Refer to Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’.
If you will. If you write for yourself, you would not want anyone to read it. Such as a diary, perhaps. That’s private.
But in my opinion truthful and authentic expression of self in appropriate places and with the appropriate audience is ‘good form’. Which again is opposed to artificial expressions that exist solely to attract attention and do not consider other people’s feelings.
In general, to be on the safe side, look at what is common in a company. Or scientific bodies, lets say.
But in more casual contexts, such as a blog entry - or a newspaper column — an interesting not to say catchy headline can make all the difference:
“Stranger Than Paradise” —a good headline can be an eye-catcher.
