Human beings are wired for loving the spotlight.  When you post something on social media and no one comments or likes, it feels almost like a personal rejection.  And when you’re posting to get attention for your business and no one cares what you’re writing, you are wasting your time.

One of the most important ways to get noticed on social media — especially on Twitter — is to make sure your post has a great headline.  There are actually very good psychological reasons for using certain words that makes it almost irresistible for people to click.  Here are 8 proven formulas to craft your headlines around:

1. Surprise — using words that surprise or startle captures attention because we love novelty.  Words that break the pattern stand out.
2. Questions — using questions works because a question mark stimulates the human brain to seek an answer.
3. Curiosity — using incomplete information in your headline to pique curiosity.  A famous example of this is the 1926 ad with the headline, “They laughed when I sat down at the piano…but when I started to play…!”
4. Negatives — using negative superlatives like “worst” or “stop” intrigues us because we want to know if there is something we shouldn’t be doing.
5. How to — we all want to get better, so using “how to” in your headline makes a promise of improving the reader’s knowledge.
6. Numbers — because humans dislike uncertainty, we respond well to numbers in headlines.
7. Reader referencing — using phrases like, “For those who don’t know what to do after a car accident” or just the word “you” are powerful drivers.
8. Specifics — quantifiable facts and figures that elicit an image in our head are incredibly intriguing.

Here are more than 180 power words to use in your headlines, courtesy of CoSchedule.com:

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