Want to Hook Eyeballs? Avoid These Six Blunders

Hook the Title To get the reader to dive into the scroll, lead with an imperative. An imperative after a dependent clause works better. A one-sentence story works. Shock value helps. The second person is a direct call to action.

Marry The Guy Who Does This

If Your Boyfriend Does This, Marry Him

No Books? Don’t Fuck Him!

I Married My Abuser. Then, Things Got Weird.

Here’s How You Know You Should Marry the Guy.

If You Have Done This, You Have Wasted Your Twenties

Maybe You Need an In-poo-sion

In the title, reference three to ten chunks of information. That will keep the reader looking for the first, second and N+1th as they move from the title to the post, and as they read the post.

Three Ways to Lose a Man Overnight

Four Signs That a Guy is Boyfriend Material

Ten Things You Can Do To Retire Before 35

Use bolded section headings Write in bullet-points, not sentences.

Signal the number of bullet points in the title, to keep the audience reading. See above.

Full sentences for academic journals, not blog posts.

Use visuals Attractive young people smiling at the camera, looking toward the horizon, or canoodling. A signpost relevant to the content (“Scam Alert!” “Bullshit!” “Wrong Way”). Catch the eye. Don’t leave the space blank.

Reference the Stoics Presocratic fragments like “You can’t step in the same river twice”; or “The man called me a dog; why was he surprised when I pissed on him?” can be slotted in, but should not lead. Write about Epictetus. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and how they can teach you how to live a good life. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, the good life, and retirement at thirty-five.

Avoid Plato and Aristotle. They punch below their weight.

Write about about inner states Don’t write about the structure of the electron, ergative languages, double taxation, or bond convexity. Those are topics extrinsic to the reader. Write about how the reader can catch and hold on to a man, find her center, come to terms with her traumatic past, retire at thirty-five, or live a decent life after sixty-five.

Be meta The prefix “meta” has come to mean “something about something else” in English, but in Greek it meant (and still means), simply, “after”. In the traditional ordering of Aristotle’s works, the physica, or treatises dealing with natural science, came first. Writings dealing with what we now call metaphysics came later. For lack of a better title, these were called the metaphysica, or ‘things that come after the physica’. Because the topics dealt with in the metaphysica went beyond the surface of the physical world, the prefix meta- has come to mean what it does now in English. That’s why, when a Greek says, “Meta thio evthomathes”, she means “after two weeks”, but a metaconversation is a conversation about conversations.

I am sure that Epictetus wrote about that.

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