Title Craft

Learning objectives

• Quote the 1,000-post study's title-length, timing, and post-type figures.
• Explain why question-titles underperform.
• Front-load value in a title's first 3-4 words.
• Explain the curiosity-vs-information title tradeoff.

Prerequisites: Lesson 3.2.1.

Core concepts

Upvote.net's March 2026 study turns title-writing into numbers you can defend. Titles of 18+ words produced a median 2,570 upvotes versus 1,584 for 6-8 word titles, longer, information-carrying titles beat punchy short ones. External links outperformed text posts, 3,015 versus 1,318 median. Most counterintuitively: question-format titles performed 16% worse than statements. Reddit readers aren't being teased into an open loop like a cold-email subject line, they're scanning a feed and rewarding titles that already say what's inside. "How we cut deploy time from 40 minutes to 6" beats "Want to know how we made deploys faster?" every time.

Front-loading is the mechanical skill underneath this. Reddit feeds are scanned in a fraction of a second, so the first 3-4 words carry almost the entire signal-or-skip decision. "We cut deploy time" earns a second look before the rest registers; six words of throat-clearing bury the information, exactly the hedge-opening habit from Lesson 3.1.1. Cut throat-clearing from the front of every title.

Two more figures matter. Crossposts get a 195% higher median than original posts, not a shortcut to fake by manufacturing your own crossposts, but evidence that a genuinely useful post others choose to reshare compounds far beyond its original reach. Comment count correlates at 0.52 with upvotes, a genuine open question in the post's body, not the title, can still drive discussion despite question titles underperforming.

The synthesis: state the real result in the first 3-4 words, keep the title 12-18+ words long, avoid question marks, never let the product name lead. "Claude cut our support-ticket triage time by 60%, here's the exact prompt chain we use" follows every rule at once.

Video lessons

Supporting reading

• What Gets Upvoted on Reddit? 1,000-Post Study, Upvote.net (https://upvote.net/blog/reddit-upvote-study), the primary data source for this lesson.
• The key to self promotion on Reddit, Marketing Examples (https://marketingexamples.com/content/reddit), revisit for the value-first title examples, now at the title-craft level.

Exercise

Take one drafted post from Lesson 3.2.1. Rewrite its title three ways: 6-8 words, 12-15 words, 18+ words. Predict which performs best using this lesson's data.

Assignment

Build a personal title checklist (front-loaded result, 12-18+ words, no question mark, product name not leading) and run it against every title for the rest of this course.

Claude workflow

• Skill idea: a title-scorer predicting an upvote band from the length/format correlations, with a rewrite if it fails the checklist.
• Automation: none, title selection is a per-post creative decision.

Expected outcomes

• Can quote the 18+-word, 3,015-vs-1,318 external-link, and 16%-question-penalty figures.
• Personal title checklist built and applied to at least three real drafts.
• Can explain why organic crossposting beats manufactured cross-posting.

---