I have a teeny-tiny rant. More of a crank, really. It's this: Many media and marketing articles online have a quirk I find annoying. It's the pop culture headline reference. You've seen it.
What I Learned from <Inception, Sun Tzu, my dog, Indiana Jones, Bridget Jones, Alice in Wonderland> about Social Media Marketing
7 Things <Captain Kangaroo, Game of Thrones, Bar-Hopping, Owning an iPad, Beavis and Butthead> Taught Me About Sales
What <Steve Jobs, Stephen Colbert, Stephen Wright, Stephen King, Steven Seagal, Kim Kardashian, Regis Philbin, Goldilocks and the Three Bears> Can Teach You about Email Marketing
Everything I Need to Know about Content Marketing I Learned from <Watching Survivor, Fantasy Football, Newt Gingrich, The Muppets, Anna Karenina>
Enough already! What does this tell me about the article you want me to read? A hodge-podge of thoughts pasted together by a few well-known moments in a famous person's career? Yeah. Clever.
I don't click because I'm not sure what I'm going to get. Just like that famous box of chocolates. (See what I did there?)
I admire great headlines. I wish I always wrote brilliant ones. More than that, I believe headlines are a promise, and I wish everyone wrote headines fulfilled by the content those headlines point to.