Who Else Wants to Know Why Everybody is Using “Who Else Wants…” In Titles?

We’ve all seen the old chestnut “Who Else Wants to Know [Insert incredible benefit/Secret of Choice]” right?

Why do people keep using it? What’s so special about this opening heading that has caused everybody to jump on the bandwagon?

Well, I can tell you this much just from experience…

First of all, it has worked in a big advertising campaign somewhere, this is why it’s being flogged to death.

Secondly, it has elements of hypnotic writing embedded in it.

What are these elements…

• By asking “Who else wants…?” the writer is offering the reader a presupposition that others have received whatever follows ‘who else wants’.
• Going deeper, it also presupposes that the other people actually wanted whatever follows ‘who else wants’.
• It uses social proof to push the reader in the direction of doing what others have previously done.

Presuppositions in Sales Online

‘Who else wants’ is a great example of the use of presupposition in headlines, even if it has been used so much that people are unlikely to buy into it any more. What are other methods of using presupposition that we can utilize to sell online?

Find it hard to think of an example you might have seen in sales? Me too! :-s Hang on, let’s see if I can’t come up with an example off the top of my head that could be used in a sales page, blog post or autoresponder.

Why people no longer need to worry about paying me extortionate amounts of money to teach them how to use influential writing techniques…

Did you spot the presuppositions in there? Here they are…

• I used to charge extortionate prices to teach people how to use influential writing techniques.
• I used to teach people influential writing techniques for money.

Note that I didn’t actually say that I DID ever charge or teach people, I just implied it, did you make a presupposition in your own mind?

Presuppositions can also be used to great effect when used with search terms, just check out your fave keyword tool and add to the search term to create a presupposition type sentence for your post title.

Here’s an example headline from a keyword I randomly took from my favorite keyword tool ‘keyword strategy’…

5 reasons why you should stop selling death sticks and rethink your life.

This presupposes that the reader sells death sticks, it will also likely pull in visitors who are highly interested in the subject of ‘death sticks’ when they read the Google/Bing/Yahoo/Ask etc search results.

Anyways, this is a brain destroying subject that I have had enough of for one sitting.

I’m sure there are guys out there who can give a far more elegant decription of presuppositions than I just did.

Gis a comment you presuppositional experts!

Seen any other examples of the well overused ‘who else wants’ headline? Let me know about those too!

Here’s one of my favourites…

“Who Else Wants To Know How To Care For Your Ferret In 7 Days (Or Less) – Guaranteed?”

Erm… I do?