How to write headlines that work

Presented live on Tuesday, Mar 20, 2018

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100 Facts About 100 Headlines for 100 Days for 100 Different Companies

What would you learn if you wrote 100 headlines every day for 100 days… and for 100 different companies / products? Justin Blackman of Pretty Fly Copy found out exactly that when he wrote 10,211 headlines over the course of about 3 months. In this tutorial, he’ll show you exactly how to write headlines faster – and tell good ones from bad – using his process and his favorite copy formulas.

This tutorial is brought to you by Airstory writing software, used in this tutorial. You can add the Airstory headline formulas template to your free Airstory account here

TRANSCRIPT

Introduction [00:00]

Joanna Wiebe: Good morning, everybody, or afternoon or evening, depending on where you are. Joanna here from Copy Hackers and Airstory. Hello, hello I am joined by, of course, Sarah is here also from Airstory. Today we have special guest, Justin. Justin, you’re here. You’re here with us.

Justin Blackman: Hi, yeah, I’m here.

Joanna Wiebe: Awesome. Justin Blackman is here. He is … In the email leading up to this, we called you the 10,000 Headlines Guy. That’s your nickname.

Justin Blackman: Yeah, yeah, it was … I wrote a lot.

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, you wrote a lot. While people are filing in, I’ll just do some quick housekeeping, and then we’ll dive into what Justin’s going to share with us today. Housekeeping is … Yes, we are recording this. A replay will be available. 

Yes, there is a template that will be shared out today, as well. If you would like to chat us, as Kevin just did, feel free to chat us using the Chat button. Alternatively, if you want to leave a question that you really want Justin to answer, then go ahead and put that in the Q&A area, and we’ll get to those at the very end of Justin’s live headline writing tutorial.

Joanna Wiebe: Anything else? Yeah, oh, and if you do chat at us and you would like to chat to everybody feel free to select Everyone instead of just all panelists and then the whole world will see all of your nice things. Happy Spring, it’s the first day of spring! Unless you’re in Australia, which means it’s the first day of autumn. Yes, but I’m glad, I need some spring.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay, so, Justin.

Justin Blackman: Hi.

Joanna Wiebe: Hello, how are you?

Justin Blackman: I’m good.

Joanna Wiebe: Good, cool, well you … so we have a post coming out on Copyhackers.com tomorrow that is all about a big expertise building experiment that you did. Do you wanna talk to us a bit about what happened before we get into your tutorial?

Justin Blackman: Yeah, I was doing a program with Rob Marsh and Kari Hudd with the copywriter accelerator and we came up with an idea for me called the Headline Project, where I wrote 100 headlines in a day for 100 days and it was sort of my spin on Malcolm Roth Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule. So I had to write 10,000 headlines. And not that 10,000 headlines is the same as 10,000 hours but I figured it would be a pretty good start to make me better at messaging and figuring how to come up with things and just sort of dialing the right words quicker and faster.

Justin Blackman: And I did it. I wound up with 10,211 lines and it’s all up at TheHeadlineProject.com

Joanna Wiebe: Amazing. That’s amazing and it will be up tomorrow as well and this replay will be in that post. We’ve got some people commenting on how smart Rob Marsh is. Interestingly, Rob Marsh is the one who just chatted that over so yeah.

Justin Blackman: And it’s Kira Hudd’s birthday so we need to give a shout out, oh but she’s off today, it’s her birthday.

Joanna Wiebe: Love you Kira. Cool, okay, so yes. It’s amazing so you wrote a ton of headlines.

Justin Blackman: I did.

Joanna Wiebe: What you’ve done for us for today’s tutorial is you’ve put … so you ended up landing on some formulas that you found really useful or you would repeat, do you wanna just talk just a bit about what we’re gonna see today?

Justin Blackman: Sure, yeah. When I started the project I essentially just Googled headline formulas and I came up with 439 that I threw into an Excel sheet. Little by little I cut those down and I wound up with a few favorites and that’s essentially what I shared with our new template. They are, some of them are classics, they’re not all, they laugh when I sat down at the piano. But I did take some great lines from Jay Abraham and I sort of reverse engineered them. Laura Belgray was also a huge inspiration to me and I, she’s got a tagline cheat sheet that I sort of reverse engineered as well and there’s a few posts on there. And then the rest are just sort of general headline formulas for content and landing pages and even subject lines I looked at and just kind of played around and threw everything that I liked down to a template.

Live Writing Headlines [04:16]

Joanna Wiebe: Nice. Alright so we’re going to share that out and you’re going to share your screen right away because what’s going to happen now is Justin is going to live write a bunch of headlines for us. I don’t know how many. Justin, do you have a sense for how many you’ll get through?

Justin Blackman: Well, it, I think we could probably get about 30 done maybe a little more.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay. Cool. Alright, that’s amazing. And what we’ll do is we, Justin you’re going to be writing about Airstory, today, in your headlines but we want to know which specific topic the audience would like. So we’re about to launch a poll. Be ready to answer please, which of these topics Justin should live write headlines for: The Airstory Researcher, Airstory Collaboration, or Airstory Notes with the Smart Doc. So I’m going to launch that poll right now you should see it. And we’ll see those results come in. And then we’ll know which one if any of these people are wanting to see Justin- okay, the Researcher’s winning.

Justin Blackman: I voted for that one too.

Joanna Wiebe: Oh! Notes is win- oh, it’s tight. Nobody wants collaboration, that’s funny. Huh, okay, we’ve got just a few more to come in, well, maybe a hundred more? Slowing down. Some people are not voting. Okay. Alright, it’s so close. Okay, it looks like at 46 votes, 46% for the Airstory Researcher.

Justin Blackman: Alright. That worked out well because that’s the one that I’ve been thinking about the most because I forgot that we were doing a poll so. I haven’t written lines yet but I’ve kinda been brainstorming in the back so we’ll see. But I’ll also show you how, because we do have three different topics that we can do, how I can take one line and just revamp it different ways so you can use the same formula three times to get all of them. But yeah, the way that I’ll start, every time I began a project I just sort of opened up the website, I looked at some editor’s sites and looked at a lot of reviews, whether Amazon or depending on what the product was.

Headline Formulas Template [06:50]

Justin Blackman: So I’ve already got those tabs open for Airstory, should I go ahead and share my screen now?

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, I think let’s do it, let’s see it.

Justin Blackman: Alright. Let’s see. So I want desktop 2 and alright. We good here? You guys see the Tuesday Template?

Joanna Wiebe: Yes.

Justin Blackman: Alright. So, this is the template that we’ll be showing. You’ll se that I’ve got a bunch of tabs open just to kind of save time. Oh, I’ll quickly go through them. So I’ve got the Airstory, just the home page, and then just some other sites. I have some other landing pages that we’ve got. And I’ll quickly browse through these and I’ll look for some recurring themes that I like. And then I’ll just sort of throw them on. I also looked at some competitors. So, I looked at Google Docs, I looked a Google Doc’s Chrome, The Google Play Store reviews. Googled “Air Story Reviews” and came up with a few things from here. And then so, different reviews and then I’ve also got my headline project here and one of the nice things that I have is an arsenal of 10,000 lines stuck in my head so I can pull from a few of the old ones to drop them in there.

Justin Blackman: So, we’re gonna go here. Now, I’ll also say this. When I first started, I saw a few posts that said you wanna write about twenty lines to get to a good one. I knew that I had to write a hundred, so my first twenty lines became throw-away lines. They are my ugly first draft. Rather than try to create twenty good lines, I just write junk on the page. I get all of the how-to blanks, the how to do blank without blank. Just get it out and kind of brainstorm from there. So I’m not trying to write good. So I’m gonna start writing right now. Even before I dive into it.

Justin Blackman: And right before I dive into the research, just to get some themes out on the paper and see what pops up. So, we’re gonna do research.

Justin Blackman: Let’s see. Pardon my typing, it’s gonna be bad, because I’m going to go fast. So How to Click on my Research Fast.

Justin Blackman: “How to pull data from the Internet to put into your blog post.”

Justin Blackman: And these are things that are not good. They’re just getting out and some of these look like they’re gonna be written for SEO and written in 2012. And that’s the point, just get it out there and see what words pop up.

Justin Blackman: How to clip resources from anywhere.

Justin Blackman: How to write a long blog post faster.

Justin Blackman: Usually when I hit a theme, I’ll try to go faster on that. So

Justin Blackman: “How to write an epic post in as little as 23 minutes.” Again, I have no idea if that’s accurate, I’m just getting stuff out there and seeing what happens. So we’re doing Researcher. So “How to find clip and drop research into your post.” And this is gonna sound dumb. But I actually just found a theme there. Find, clip and drop. What’s the pattern for writing three things? I, A, O. Yeah, I, A, O, big bad wolf. Clip, drop, research, that’s I, O, E. So if I wanna do I, A, O, we’ll do

Justin Blackman: “How to I. Clip, Drag, and Drop Research into your next article.” And maybe I can pull something from up above with using nothing but your mouse.

Justin Blackman: Alright, so then I can build on that. “How to write your best epic blog post using nothing but your mouse.” And I kinda like that. I don’t know that it’s entirely accurate for what we’re doing, but maybe I can find a theme. And now what I’m gonna do is just take this line and see if I can kind of crop it down into something here. Most industry professionals do blank, but we’re not most industry professionals. So again, that’s reverse engineered from one of Jay’s lines, so I’m gonna do “Most blog writers spend more time writing and typing than they do researching but you’re not most writers.”

Justin Blackman: So, I kind of like that one. I don’t know that it would beat any type of control. Most blog writers spend more time writing and typing than do researching, but you’re not most writers. And then you can, you know, neat Airstory. Again, these aren’t that great. But I’m just kinda showing you how it works. So, just kinda getting stuff out there, finding themes. Some of the other things that I like to do, we’ll post song lyrics. Jo, I know that you like “Moves Like Jagger.” I watched that.

Joanna Wiebe: I didn’t really like it[inaudible 00:12:19]

Justin Blackman: You like it, it’s your favorite

Joanna Wiebe: It’s not [inaudible 00:12:24]

Justin Blackman: So, Moves Like Jagger. We’re gonna write like Jobo. That’s our line for moves like Jagger. So write like Jobo. So, write the way copywriters write. Oh, that’s two words, sorry. Write the way Copyhackers write. So, something like that, if you’re familiar with Copyhackers, that could be interesting. So who else wants a better writing resource, I’m gonna change this one a little bit. The same one all the the folks, I can’t type today. It’s the caffeine and the nerves.

Joanna Wiebe: You’re doing awesome.

Justin Blackman: So, yeah, you can do something like that. Who else wants a better writing resource, the same ones all the folks at Copyhackers use. And then I can, you know, if I just wanna change that. So who else wants a better writing resource without the clunkiness of Google Docs?

Justin Blackman: So again, same line just sort of changing things around. So now I’ve got a few different ideas out there. I will go take a peek at the sites here. So Microsoft Word’s [inaudible 00:14:01] ten percent of. That’s [inaudible 00:14:06] Copyhackers so we’ve got that. Why Airstory, um, so like this you know, faxing documents to 1994. Which, I can probably pull in something right here. I’d like to give this to any blog writer before they start researching their next post before they start using data from 1987. Or 1984.

Justin Blackman: So just, again kind of dropping in there, taking something that exists, throwing them in and then putting a little spin on it and seeing what happens from there. So Google Docs. So I looked at this one. Google Docs, Slides, Review Collaboration is King. And I saw that line earlier and I’ve been waiting to type this one but. So again not quite here but if this is again on the collaboration team rather than research but Collaboration is King, Airstory is their castle. I can’t type. So again, just pulling from lines that we’ve got. Changing them a little bit. So Google Docs, looking at this review from the Play Store. Here’s a negative review, which is always good for us because it’s competition.

Justin Blackman: “So I would honestly love this app if it helped with getting things done on the go. But now it stops working after less than a minute.”

Justin Blackman: So you can drop that directly in.

Joanna Wiebe: No!

Justin Blackman: No that wasn’t your review, that was Google Docs.

Joanna Wiebe: Oh, sweet!

Justin Blackman: No, that was not Airstory. That was competitors.

Justin Blackman: So don’t, let’s float, I’m just gonna grab one at random here. How to, there we go. We’re still not. You’re not still putting up with the horrible user face of Google Docs, are you? Something like that.

Justin Blackman: So you can kind of catch people’s attention just by using a, and I don’t mean to throw shade at Google Docs but, that’s what people were saying that they don’t like it. So, Airstory reviews, so we’ll get on the same page. That goes to Collaborations, so I’m gonna hold off on that a little bit.

Justin Blackman: So here we go. This is subside anything automatically with the drag and drop document builder. And again these are already your words so, so when it’s stealing these exactly. So Chrome extension. Actually, this reminds me, I’m gonna go over here, table of contents, right underneath The Fart Candle, I’ve got the Spritz Feed Reading App, which I don’t know if you guys are aware of this but it’s essentially, it shows you words one by one, so you can flip through a blog post really fast. So, speed reading isn’t a skill, it’s a Chrome extension.

Justin Blackman: I knew that I had that line so I’m gonna go back here and, there we go, better blog research isn’t a process, it’s a Chrome Extension.

Justin Blackman: So I’ve just kind of used a few lines that I had just gotta write it fast. And then so, again, I’ve looked at Airstory reviews, this is the AppSumo one. I’ve got this link right here.

Justin Blackman: Let’s see, so, this is staring at a blank page, so it should read more out of the templates, but let’s see, I can probably take one of the existing lines here that we’ve already done. You’re not still putting up with the user interface from Google Docs are you, we can change that one, use that same one. You’re not still starting to outline your work by facing a blank page, are you? So, again, using that theme, just taking an existing line from the template, flipping the user face to the start, to the blank page, for research, so can take the same line and just tweak a few words and you’ve got it.

Justin Blackman: So let’s see, Airstory research. So Taia had a cool line, “Airstory has completely replaced G. Docs for me.” And that “How to write a better outline even if you’re not comfortable,” nah, “Even if you’re not sure, if your team knows how to use anything but Google Docs.”

Justin Blackman: So that can go on the sharing phase. So, again, you’ve got it all here. Just drag and drop. Let’s see.

Joanna Wiebe: Justin, can I ask a question?

Justin Blackman: Of course!

Headlines That Work for Newer Copywriters [19:30]

Joanna Wiebe: Thank you. I mean, so one of the things that comes up as I’m watching is that I think it can be harder for newer copywriters and people who don’t write copy as their primary job to know when, because some of them are like “oh, I like the sound of that.” So, do you have any, have you broken down at all over the past 10,211 what is that makes some headlines, like some of them stand out more to you? Do you have any sense for that yet? [crosstalk 00:20:04]

Justin Blackman: Well, I have a bit of a personal sense. Let’s see. Let me see if I can … how do I change it back so I can talk to you but looking at you. I don’t know how to do that. Okay, there we go. What if I do stop share? Alright, am I back now? Okay. So usually the way that I do it is I just, every writer is gonna have their own voice and their own sense. I try to take words that I like and just sort of build on it and see if there’s a theme.

Have Fun and Writing Will Come More Quickly [20:22]

Justin Blackman: Mostly because if I like the sound of it, I know I can add a little bit of fun to it and as soon as I start enjoying what I’m writing, then the lines come quicker and I kind of have a general theme that if it’s fun to write, it’s fun to read.

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah.

Justin Blackman: So, I try to do … try to look for a little bit of enjoyment in it.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay, cool.

Justin Blackman: It’s a science.

Joanna Wiebe: It is and we can’t expect a science for everything to do with this. I think having the formulas to start with and just moving through them. There are 117 headline formulas in that template. All on a page or you can look them up any time with the tag headline formula in the Notes library. So that’s already a bit of a science right? Like, okay, good. We’ve got a strong starting part and I get it. It would be, I guess there’s like a world where it would just be nice to know. It sounds good to me, do I have to test it to really know if it’s gonna work? There should be an in-between but that’s just a side conversation anyway because I don’t know what that would be. But it is interesting to watch someone else write headlines, to listen to you thinking aloud as you’re doing it and I know you’re on the spot.

How Do You Know When Your Headline is Good? [22:00]

Joanna Wiebe: I have the live version. Just a dream. But yeah, no, anyways, it’s interesting to think about the whole how do you know when something is good?

Justin Blackman: Yeah. And we do have, notice, that we look at the formulas a lot of them are how to and then find out which so, I’d say, you were kind of alluding to it before but that’s where the science is. The science is in the formula, you’re just filling in the gaps. You’ve gone a little bit Mad Libs style on it. But you never really know. I’d say that that’s where you’re taking the true consumer language and using a group of formulas and that’s kind of the collaboration. Hopefully when they come together and have a pretty baby everything works.

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, yeah, awesome. Cool, okay, well I know we’re at the 22 minute mark. Do you wanna take some questions?

Justin Blackman: Let’s go for that, yeah.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay, cool. That is awesome. Thank you for sharing that with us. Your process, how you got to all of those headlines, that’s amazing. Also, so we’ll share out some links afterward too but I think Sarah has the Laura Belgray one to share out if anybody wants to learn more about those.

Q&A [23:00]

How Many Headlines Do I Need to Write Before You Can Get One Headline Out? [23:00]

Joanna Wiebe: Anonymous asked “How long should writing a headline take?” So if you wanna get one headline out, Justin?

Justin Blackman: Well, I’d say if you wanna get one headline out, you need to write at least fifteen, minimum. Don’t try to create that great one headline. Don’t just focus on one. There’s a line that heard somebody say, and I forget her name but. Take as many shots on goal as possible and then one of them’s gonna score. So write as many as you need to to get it. I will say that it will go a lot faster and you’ll get to that one by using these formulas and not trying to come up with something new on your own. Just put your spin on an existing formula and that’s how you get to it. But don’t just try to write one.

Joanna Wiebe: Cool, awesome. Todd says “Did you write, did you hand write them or type them?”

Justin Blackman: I type them.

Joanna Wiebe: You did type them.

Justin Blackman: I have really bad penmanship.

Joanna Wiebe: What’s that?

Justin Blackman: I have really bad penmanship. Especially when [inaudible 00:23:51]. Yeah, and they’re all at HeadlineProject.com It’s up there.

Joanna Wiebe: Awesome, yes, HeadlineProject.com, which I think someone tried to get to and Sarah sent out the link to it, or someone else did. So, perfect. And then Kate asked, we already went through this in a chat a bit but it’s worth mentioning “We talked about I, A, O for ordering things. Can you talk a bit about that for those that were curious about that?”

Justin Blackman: Yeah. I think that you said that in, kind of in passing during the ten x 90 pages. And it’s essentially the vowel order that you should do for phrasing things. And then I read something else about it, the Big Bad Wolf is the way that I remember it. So, whenever you’re lining up three things, the way that it will sound best to the reader’s ear is if the vowel order is I, A, O. Like big bad wolf sounds better than Bad Big Wolf. Or bad wolf that’s big. Whenever I’ve got three things, I try to keep it in that order.

Joanna Wiebe: Cool. That’s awesome. I love those kinds of crazy little rules that we don’t even know we’re following. Okay, so Dave Alice’s question, and it’s mostly about, well, it’s also about subject lines, but headlines too, “What about using emojis and symbols in your headlines? Do you do that?”

Justin Blackman: I typically don’t. I’ve done it on a few emails and it’s worked. I’m all for testing it. But, I’m Gen-X. I don’t think in terms of emojis. I still think in words. Test it. If it works for you, if it matches the brand voice, if it matches your style, there’s no reason not to try it.

Joanna Wiebe: Cool. Excellent. Andrea, I think? Andrea asks “When finding words to fill in the template, do I just Google the topic?”

Justin Blackman: You might. Yeah, like we found something about the clunky user face when, on Google Docs, which I was able to drop in. I don’t know if it’s word for word but I was able to drop that in. So, if it fits, it sorta depends on what’s said and which template you use. But yeah. Using your, using the natural language of the consumer is always a good idea.

Should You Use Specific Language for Your Audience? [26:00]

Joanna Wiebe: Cool. Awesome. Nicola’s asked a question about stages of awareness. I think even just going down to like, top of funnel versus bottom of funnel headlines. “Justin, do you have different thoughts or processes when creating headlines for different copywriting projects. Are you always thinking about stages of awareness? How do you approach that?”

Justin Blackman: Now with this project in particular, I didn’t. Because it was just about learning the process and getting into it. When I’m working on a landing page? Absolutely. One thing that this project really helped me do was develop empathy. And I, you’ll see on the post tomorrow. But I talk about I made an allusion to Freaky Friday or Trading Places or any of the movies where people change bodies. It came to point where I would literally close my eyes and pretend that I was becoming that person. And, you know, what would be on my desk? What would I be feeling? What emotion would I feel like? And really just try to become that consumer. And then I would just approach the lines that, in that style as that person.

Justin Blackman: So, you definitely need to consider that when you’re working on specific lines for consumers.

Joanna Wiebe: That’s very cool that like, an empathy exercise came out if it. That’s interesting.

Justin Blackman: Yeah, it wasn’t intentional. It just happened.

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah, nice. Okay, Tom asked “Did you run any of your headlines through a headline analyzer like CoSchedules?”

Justin Blackman: Every now and again I did. I’ve got mixed feelings on those. Some of those, mean if you wanna score a high score on CoSchedule then put in Betty White, Donald Trump, or Kim Kardashian. So there’s a few formulas in there don’t entirely make sense. And I know that I’ve written some lines that scored very high on that, and I read, and I would never put this on a post. So there is an art to it. I do, I would recommend using those templates that we’ve- gotta get a guide for it.

Justin Blackman: But I don’t rely on those so much. And I didn’t … again, because I wasn’t going live with these headlines for a particular brand, I was able to just write them in my style. So, I can’t say with certainty that anything that I wrote out of the 10,000 lines would meet a control. I just know that I know how to write faster and I know how to come up with messages and themes faster. But I don’t know that they would meet a control.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay. Okay, interesting. Kasam, I think, asked “What if the headlines sounds cool but doesn’t lend itself to anything useful such as a good blog post? Or is the process come up with headlines and on the second round determine how to use them?” Like are you just trying to come up with a whole bunch and then figure out what to do with them?

Justin Blackman: I’d say it’s 80% of everything that I wrote every day is unusable. If you can use it working at the body copy, if you can use it as a subhead, that’s great. Other times you just need to kill your darlings.

Joanna Wiebe: Oh man. Sad but true. Okay, Kasam says “And does this process work when writing email subjects lines?”

Justin Blackman: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ll write at least 20 or 30 subject lines. Kind of the same process and then find a theme and go with it.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay, cool. I think you have an opinion on click bait headlines? Based on what I read in your post? So Anonymous asks, “Would you say click bait headlines are becoming out of trend? Or are they still very much relevant? Is there [crosstalk 00:29:17] for headlines coming up?”

Justin Blackman: I hate click bait. But again, click bait’s got two parts. If it’s to be true definition of click bait, it’s gotta go to a disappointing article. So, make the content better. That’s number one. And number two, be sure that you’re using it in the right, for the right article.

Justin Blackman: There’s a meme in my subject line, and it’s got a caption of a tweet to CNN. It says “Dear CNN, stop using the curiosity gap for everything, especially murder stories.”

Joanna Wiebe: Right.

Justin Blackman: You know, things like that. There’s two parts to it. I hate click bait, but click bait is usually because it’s a disappointing article.

Joanna Wiebe: Yeah. And it’s all in how you implement it. Right? There’s been the ability to write click bait forever, it’s just increasingly, we’re getting skeezier with it. But you don’t have to be.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay, Diane said “Do you use hashtags in your titles, especially for writing blog posts?”

Justin Blackman: I don’t. Mostly because I don’t think that it’ll show up when people are searching. Like, you don’t search Google with hashtags. I don’t think that it really has any relevancy. It might be relevant for tone of voice for a product or an article. But, to me, it doesn’t lend a whole lot of value.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay, cool. But you’re a Gen-X, though, you don’t think in hashtags.

Justin Blackman: I am, that’s right.

Does This Headline Writing Process Work for SEO? [30:45]

Joanna Wiebe: Just giving you [inaudible 00:30:49]. Jeff and Hacker Hello asks, “Is this the same process for SEO headlines?”

Justin Blackman: As far as the research, yeah, but that you’re gonna wanna do more about Google Analytics and find out what people are searching for there so you’re sure that you’re. You can still use those templates but the key words that you wanna use will be more important than coming up with the right tone of voice.

Joanna Wiebe: Perfect. Awesome.

Justin Blackman: Or both.

Joanna Wiebe: Yes. Excellent. Okay and Dawn has just asked that we share the template again. So yes, Sarah will chat that link out another, one more time. So that’s cool and when you use the Airstory template, just as a heads up everybody, when you’re actually in it, you don’t have to go into the template every single time you wanna write headline unless you just go under your notes library. Go under all notes, choose that at the top of your notes library. And you can just search headline formula, and you’ll bring up every single headline formula. You can just start dragging and dropping them onto your page as you see fit. So you don’t have to go into that each time. Okay.

Joanna Wiebe: Krista asked. Oh, Krista’s just making a comment “Thanks for sharing the fact that 80% of what you write isn’t used. I used to find that frustrating but necessary.”

Justin Blackman: Yeah.

Joanna Wiebe: I can use that after all. Okay, Leon says, and it’s not a question either “I’m always amazed by how much I learn on these calls.” That’s great. Yay. Oh, okay, that’s just a really nice comment that she left separately. Thanks Leon.

Joanna Wiebe: Anonymous says “What about fitting keywords into your headlines? How do you work that and keep the headline relevant, benefit driven, and click-worthy?”

Joanna Wiebe: Whoa. We’re asking a lot of a headline there.

Justin Blackman: Yeah. You’re gonna have to ask someone smarter for that.

Joanna Wiebe: Don’t try to make your headline all of those things. But, I mean, they should be those things. But I wouldn’t put that pressure on yourself, first and foremost. Right?

Justin Blackman: Yeah. Use subheads and use good content throughout the article for that too.

Joanna Wiebe: Yes. One thought per line. Okay, and then we’ve got one last question and then I think we’re done grilling you. Oh, Raoul is asking about the Chrome Extension you discussed. “You said Speed writer or something else. I don’t know what speed writer is.”

Justin Blackman: Oh, speed reader. That’s called Spritz. S-P-R-I-T-Z. I love it.

Joanna Wiebe: That was the one that helps you write.

Justin Blackman: No, that’s the one that it shows articles one word at a time. It just flashes really fast. So it’s essentially a speed reading app without speed reading.

Joanna Wiebe: Interesting. Wow, that’s cool. Okay. Oh, one more, sorry, Nikama asks, I think I’m saying that right, sorry if I’m not “So, why isn’t that plagiarism?” I don’t know. The Spritz one. I don’t-

Justin Blackman: Spritz?

Joanna Wiebe: I don’t know what you mean. So the Spritz one, why isn’t that plagiarism?

Justin Blackman: Oh, because it’s reading articles off the web. It’s not a book. It’s just, you’ll be on a page and the Chrome extension just shows the words on that page fast.

Joanna Wiebe: Okay, perfect. Okay, good, hopefully that helps. You answered 25 questions there, Justin.

Justin Blackman: And I wrote 20 something headlines. Good.

Joanna Wiebe: And that was 34 minutes. So you can get a lot done in 34 minutes. That was amazing. Justin, thank you. Where can people learn more about this? I know we have our post coming out tomorrow so they can read all about that, but where else can they find out more about you?

Justin Blackman: Yeah, so my website is prettyflycopy.com and the way to remember that, and it’s a horrible pun and I love it, is all the people say I’m pretty fly for a white guy. As soon as I came up with that line, I knew that that was my name, it’s memorable. So prettyflycopy, at Facebook, at prettyflycopy.com, I’m sorry, Facebook/prettyflycopy, Twitter, @PrettyFlyCopy, and I’m in the copywriter club on Facebook all the time.

Joanna Wiebe: Amazing. Okay, cool. You don’t have, did you say a Twitter handle? Did I hear a Twitter in there?

Justin Blackman: @PrettyFlyCopy

Joanna Wiebe: Okay, perfect, great. Okay, Justin, that was fantastic. This replay will be available very, very shortly. Thanks again, and we look forward to your post tomorrow and to seeing what else you do. What’s your next big challenge? What are you gonna do next?

Justin Blackman: I truly have no idea.

Joanna Wiebe: Some time off?

Justin Blackman: I’m good for a while. I’m just gonna ride this one.

Joanna Wiebe: You’ll have to roll with this for a while. Alright, cool. Thanks guys and thanks everybody for your great questions too, we’ll see you on our next tutorial Tuesdays. Bye!

Justin Blackman: Bye!

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