Should we work at crafting catchy sermon titles?

Well, according to my friend Steven Lee, President of SermonAudio.com, the best way to increase sermon downloads is to improve sermon titles.

We may not like it, but that’s reality.

Unless you think it’s extra holy to minimize the number of your listeners, you are probably asking: “So, how do I do it?”

In many ways it’s like writing headlines. That’s why Matt Thompson’s 10 questions to help you write better headlines is so useful. Here’s a summary checklist:

  1. Is the headline accurate?
  2. Does it work out of context?
  3. How compelling a promise does it make?
  4. How easy is it to parse?
  5. Could it benefit from a number?
  6. Are all the words necessary?
  7. Does it obey the Proper Noun Rule?
  8. Would it work better as an explanatory headline?
  9. Does it focus on events or implications?
  10. Could it benefit from one of these 10 words? Top, Why, How, Will, New, Secret, Future, Your, Best, Worst.

And you can read the Matt’s exposition of each question here.

  • Dave

    From a secular standpoint Copyblogger has a really good series on headline writing that might be a helpful addition to this discussion: http://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/

  • Scot

    Given the sermon titles at SermonAudio, it would not be hard to make them more exciting. Someone posting part 321 of their Ezekiel exposition invites people to ignore them.

  • arekwhite

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