Bloggers, can we make better titles for our posts?

I've been scrolling the Bubbles new feed for a few weeks now. I think of it like trolling^[1] for good feeds. This is a pretty high-volume feed so I can't click through every post so I end up just reading the title and trying to decide if it's something I'd be interested in reading. As a person on the internet, I have opinions about what makes a good title.

Prebuttal #

Let me start my list by saying yes, I understand each person can write whatever they like on their blog and in whatever manner they wish. I presume a blogger has submitted their RSS feed to Bubbles because they want people to read what they're writing. Not in a growing my audience kind of way but in a I'm looking for my tribe kind of way. I'm looking for my tribe too. Help me find you! We can be a tribe together.

Use descriptive titles #

Please for the love of god, give me some idea what your blog post is about. I'm interested in a wide range of topics. So even if your post is about something obscure, give me something other than Recent Thoughts... or So Far, So Good. Recent thoughts on what?! What is good so far??? Especially on Bubbles, but maybe even on other blog aggregators, the title is the main signal so pause for a beat and try to come up with a decent title for your blog post.

Avoid bucket posts #

I think this one might be a bit unpopular but I do not like the round-up posts. You know the ones. They're titled Week Notes, Week in Review, Weekly Links and the like. When I'm cruising Bubbles, I do not click weekly notes from randos. For bloggers I know and have followed, I do often scan them.

This one probably is less write better titles and is more write better posts. I think many people use these posts as a writing tool to exercise their writing muscles. I'd suggest a better tool is the age-old favorite of writing blog posts about blogging, like I'm doing here.

Do write posts in reply to other people #

If you're trying to exercise your writing muscles and establish a habit, another good way to find things to write about is to respond to what other people are writing.

These types of posts are way better than bucket posts.

Avoid clickbait titles #

I see this less on Bubbles and way more on Google News if I'm just doing a quick doom scroll during lunch but I hate titles like He lost so much weight doing this... Grrr I hate that. Don't do it. I will curse you out under my breath!

Conclusion #

And that's pretty much it. Those are the main things that irritate me when scrolling Bubbles. If you don't like my opinions, well just ignore them and continue to write on your blog however you like.

What are your pet peeves about reading others' blog posts?

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1. As in fishing, not pissing off liberals. ↩︎