Using Twitter to Find the Best Headlines

At the risk of stating the obvious, the better your headlines grab eyeballs, the more money you can make. Even a tiny improvement can add significant money if your sales funnel set up with a high-priced product. For example, getting 5% more people to opt into your list, open an email, or buy a $7 product could result in another 1/2 to 1 percent buying your more expensive and profitable product over a year, which could easily add thousands to your bottom line.

One way marketers used to test headlines was through Adwords, back in the day when they were super cheap. A marketer would try out two or more headlines to see which pulled the best. Seasoned marketers still test headlines with Google and Facebook ads, but if you’re on a small budget, there is a less expensive way.

These days Twitter is the easiest and cheapest method for testing headlines, so long as you have a following. Choose what you think are your two best headlines, tweet them both, and track the results.

First, the tweeting: To be fair, you’d want to tweet both simultaneously, but that’s probably not the best way. Instead, tweet them both in the morning and again in the afternoon, about 20 to 30 minutes apart. So, for example, in the morning, you might tweet headline A at 9:00 and headline B at 9:30. Then do the same in the afternoon but reverse the order.

Track your results with excellent click-tracking software like Click Magick or your favorite tracker. When you’ve got a winner, test it against another headline, and so forth.

Now then… why use this method instead of split testing? I prefer split testing for something like a squeeze page or a sales letter, but sometimes this Twitter method comes in especially handy.

Are you sending an essential series of emails for a big promotion? Are you getting ready to launch a product and want a good idea in advance of which headline will work best? Using Twitter to test your subject lines up front can put you ahead of the game and into profit faster.