Blogging is a way for businesses to regularly publish and promote relevant content for their customers. This type of content creation is a proven way to demonstrate industry-specific knowledge about collision repair to your followers and customer base. Attracting, converting, and delighting potential customers begins with great content to suit their needs. And, while blogs are one of the best ways to extend your reach, you simply cannot have a great blog without an attractive headline. The headline, or title of your blog post, is the first thing readers will see. They will use the title to determine if reading the blog is worth their time. So how do we craft headlines to tell the same story or answer the same questions your blog post does?
How To Create Headlines for Repair Shop Blogs
Since you are writing for your repair shop, you must write content related to your industry. Your customers are going to search for topics related to repair problems. Using this idea of related topics will help you construct the best headline. Below are the best ways we create headlines:
Brainstorming a List of Topics
Being in the repair industry, your shop needs to focus on topics customers are searching for. A great way to come up with topics to write about is by brainstorming ideas. A lot of people find brainstorming intimidating, but here are some ways you can brainstorm a list of topics:
What are the most frequently asked questions from customers?
A great way to come up with content is to start writing down some of the questions your current clients ask you. For example, if you have several clients coming in asking about bumper repairs, create a topic about bumper repair and everything that goes into it.
What are your competitors talking about?
This is a great opportunity to find out what you and your competitors are both doing right AND wrong. Maybe your competition does not even have a blog. In that case, you are already doing better. But maybe, they have tapped into some areas you have not covered yet. It is totally okay for you to find ideas from your competitors as long as you do not copy their content.
Use Google Complete Searches or Googles Related Searches
Have you ever started to type something into Google’s search bar and it knew what you were asking before you even asked it? This is a great tool to use for how to craft a headline. You can see what the most commonly asked question are in this area. Also, if you scroll to the bottom of Google’s results page, they provide an entire list of related topic searches which you definitely be able to apply to your list.
Roundtable Discussions
Probably one of the easiest ways to generate topic ideas for headlines is too sit down with other members of your repair shop and toss around ideas. Whether you use a whiteboard, pen, and paper, or a computer, keep track of all of the ideas discussed.
Working Title
Every great headline starts as a working title. It is perfectly fine to create a headline, start writing your blog, then realize you need to change your title slightly – or even completely. A working title is a great way to flesh out ideas you have not been able to vocalize quite the way you wanted to before. Once you have chosen your topic, your working title is a great place to start narrowing down and focusing on one, specific angle. Let’s take a look at an example:
Topic: Tire Damage
Working Title: “5 Tips on Preventing a Tire Blowout”
See how you can expand on one topic? You can take tire damage and have so many different areas to focus on besides a “tire blowout.”
Keywords and Location are Vital
Your location is another key aspect of how to craft a headline. Local SEO is the way to go if you want customers and Google finding you. When you put your city and state in the headline, Google will bring up your pages and posts when people in your area search for topics you are writing about compared to other pages. This would look like this:
“5 Tips on Preventing a Tire Blowout in Baltimore, MD”
This way, when someone in, or near Baltimore, MD searches for information about tire blowouts, your post, and your shop is one of the top results. Google wants to provide searchers with the fastest, most accurate results. They know when people are asking for something, they are looking to stay relatively local. By adding your location to the headline, you are setting yourself apart from other auto body repair shops.
Be Clear
Google will only show the first 50 to 60 character of a title in their search results, so make your title count. Let readers know what they are going to learn from the post. Keeping your title short, informative, and conversational is the best way to win over your audience. If you know specific questions your audience is asking, use long-tail keywords from those questions in the title. The faster you can help your audience get to the point, the better.
Do you have more questions about how to craft a headline for your repair shops online blog? Or, do you need help writing blogs completely? At Stratosphere Studio, we have helped our clients earn millions in lead generation simply writing blogs and working with them to build out their inbound marketing strategy. If this sounds like where you want to be with your repair shops business, reach out! We’d love to hear from you.
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