Headlines matter.

You might say they rule the world. “Build that wall – and make Mexico pay for it”. “Take Back Control.” “Bollocks to Brexit.” These are headlines and they are shaping our world.

Eye tracking surveys confirm that everyone reads a headline. About 60% of readers get a third of the way through an article, while only 10% get to the end.

And yet, many presentations leave their best stuff in the conclusion, towards the end of the presentation – by which time everyone has switched off.

The main reason for this is college. At Uni we learn academic language. We are encouraged to analyze, generalize and sum up. None of these things work in a setting that requires audience engagement.  Talking with a book editor recently, I saw a sign over her desk. This is what it said:

No abstraction. No generalization. No summary. No analysis. No interpretation.

All these are death to engaging storytelling. And story telling matters. I can prove it. Look at these two stories on Buzzfeed  and make a note of how many people clicked on them.

 

There is an exponential difference in how many folks engaged with one compared to the other. Why did so many more people respond to the headline with “from Yorkshire” in it?

Clearly Yorkshire is a long way from Australia. So the hero of the story must have cared a lot to make such a long journey, the furthest you can go on planet earth. As Benjamin Franklin said, “No one cares what you know until they know that you care.”

Something else to note is the structure of the headline.

This headline shares something in common with Odysseus, Lord of The Rings and Die Hard. It starts with the hero and conforms to the oldest of story telling structures of all,  the hero’s journey.

If you start with the hero and add detail that provides emotion, your presentation will come alive form the opening slide.

And headlines are a zero sum business. If you do not open on a snappy conclusion and then use your presentation to prove your point, you are on your way to defeat. The numbers do not lie.

 

Posted in: Infographic of the day