Prompt: Topic & Title Generator
The most important step in the writing/content creation process.
These are the writing strategies and prompts I’ve used to grow to more than 3,200 newsletter subscribers in less than 6 months here on Substack, with many of my posts having gone viral/semi-viral.
It doesn’t matter how good your writing is.
If nobody clicks on it, nobody reads it.
The most important part of writing a newsletter is the title.
The reason why most people fail at growing an audience, I think, is twofold:
The majority of people are scrolling with no search intent - They are not searching for anything specific. Most people scroll until something grabs their attention - usually a pattern interrupts, a curiosity gap, a harsh truth etc.
The majority of people who do click to read your work are complete beginners - You need to explain what you want to talk about in simple terms - the reader won’t care to solve a problem in their life if they can’t understand it.
If you want people to start clicking on your long-form content, you need to start writing your titles in an attention-grabbing (while honest) way, but aimed at a general audience. You can persuade people of the severity of the problems you are trying to solve once they start reading.
If you need more help understanding what I mean, look at these newsletter titles of mine. I analyzed my best titles in helping me create this AI prompt.
Look at the following titles and ask yourself why they work.
They are all easily understood, have potential to attract a broad, general, and a new audience, and they’re all relevant issues based on other validated titles I’ve seen from my emulators (or while scrolling on Substack; I often see viral posts and screenshot the titles on my phone for inspiration).
I’ve been messing around with this prompt for a while now, and I really like the outputs.
I don’t like using AI to write content for me, but I do like using AI to bombard my brain with lots of information. Lot’s of ideas. Lot’s of draft posts. Lots of bricks I can piece together myself, to create something unique and irreplaceable.
My personal taste always gets final say. Anything the LLM throws at me is merely a draft. And I love this as an idea!
Copy and paste this prompt into Chat GPT or Claude (I love using Claude).
Once you’ve done that, then you can copy and paste in any of the following:
Topic ideas you want to explore (before you start writing)
Your finished piece of writing (essay, newsletter, blog, YouTube video script)
High-performing titles from any platform (I screenshot viral Substack titles I see while scrolling, or I look at 5-10 YouTube channels talking about similar ideas/interests as me)
High-performing short form posts you have written, or from accounts you like
I would highly recommend having 5-10 channels on YouTube or Substack you wish to emulate. Not copy, but more as imaging a group of creatives with certain ideas you would like to join.
Go and find each creator’s 5-10 best posts (if they have lots of clicks it means that topic or idea is validated - it has potential to do well), and write a similar title as theirs. Don’t even watch the video or read the article. You want to write your opinions, your ideas, and your perspective on the topic. You’re not copying content, you are emulating what has already shown to work and attract people’s attention.
Writing a title that will do well can be hit or miss.
I have posts with 1k+ likes and 20k+ views, and others with 50 likes and 3k views.
It’s more about writing a title that has the potential to do well.
If you follow the right principles often and enough, your chances of hitting a bullseye will increase more than if you didn’t. Then, you can focus on increasing how many shares or restacks you get by focusing on the quality of your writing once people are clicking.
This is what has helped for me at least.
Enjoy: