- Blah–de–blah, blah, blah
- More blah-de-blah, etc
Do your course objectives read like a legal document. Do the learners have to read them three times to find out what the course is really about?
In this narrative you’ll learn how good headlines attract attention and make learners keen to click-on and follow your Modlette.
A story about our distracted world.
Imagine you’re a world-famous violin player, and you’re at a busy railway station, everyone is hurrying past you. Do you think you’ll get noticed? Do you think people will listen?
This is a true story about Joshua Bell. He’s one of the world’s most famous violinists. He played an especially fine masterpiece on a hugely expensive violin. He played for 43 minutes, and hardly anyone stopped. He made just $32.17.
Why do you think he didn’t attract attention?
Well, he didn’t have a good headline telling people to stop and listen to his wonderful music. That’s why nobody paid attention. People just hurried to catch their train.
So, the question is: How can you attract attention so learners will get interested and excited about your Modlette? You need (of course!) a good headline or Modlette description on your opening page.
A good headline grabs attention, arouses curiosity, and promises a benefit.
How to get learners to proceed
Your learners may be doing this Modlette because they have to. Easy to put it off and do something more interesting. They’re picky about what they spend their time doing. Perhaps they want to speed through your training just to tick the boxes.
Whenever they see your Modlette description they’ll think “What’s in it for me?”
You can entice them to move into the Modlette if you promise you’ll make their lives better, more confident or their jobs more satisfying.
Here are some examples:
- How to stop losing your temper with annoying people
= The benefit is to stop showing your impatience with annoying staff.
- How to have customers wanting to buy
= The benefit is making sales easier to achieve by your attitude and presentation.
You’ll probably notice that these headlines also arouse curiosity. Can you stop losing your temper? Is it possible to influence customers to really want to buy? When your headline promises a specific benefit, you make learners curious to find out how to achieve it; this gives them a reason to proceed because they hope they can learn something from your Modlette that’ll make their lives better or easier.
The headlines create drama and attract attention with the power words:
- The phrases, stop, losing your temper, and annoying staff.
- The phrase, wanting to buy.
These are power words because they have emotional connotations.