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Your title is 75% of your communication effort – here’s the science

I’ve said in this blog that “Your title is 90% of your communication effort, because that’s all that most people will ever see.”

Well, I exaggerated.

Your poster title is probably about 75% of your communication effort. 

A couple of months ago, a paper came out that looked at “Sharing without clicking” on social media. We’ve all done it. It’s faster and easier to click that little “Repost” button than it is to read the article.

The authors got data from Facebook. They quickly found the 75% of URLs are shared without being clicked.  Note that just because someone clicked a link does not mean they read it. So the 75% value is probably an underestimate of how many people only read the title.

The bulk of the paper is trying to break down what people are more likely to share without clicking, focusing on political affiliation, which is less interesting for poster creators.

But the point remains that an enormous number of people are making decisions about what to engage with based purely on the title. It reinforces the importance of putting real effort into crafting your title.

Reference

Sundar SS, Snyder EC, Liao M, Yin J, Wang J, Chi G. 2025. Sharing without clicking on news in social media. Nature Human Behaviour 9: 156-168. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02067-4 

Related posts

Your title is 90% of your poster 

Link roundup for January 2026

A unique account of a non-traditional conference poster (pictured) with non-traditional goals.

 (T)he question of the purpose of the academic conference, and the AcademicConferenceMachine. 

Linares-Roake JB, Zawadzki JA, Zawadzki SJ. 2026. Plugging it in: This is really interesting, but what are you going to do with it. puntOorg International Journal 11(2): 219-236. https://doi.org/10.19245/25.05.pij.11.02.10
 

• • • • •

Conference organizers went out of their way to make their poster session better, and got the poster above (among others). Learn what they did:

Ecoff L, Reina Failla K, Loose D, Cassingham B. 2026. Improving the quality of dissemination efforts at a regional nursing leadership conference. Nursing Administration Quarterly 50(1): 20-24. https://journals.lww.com/naqjournal/fulltext/2026/01000/improving_the_quality_of_dissemination_efforts_at.6.aspx

• • • • • 

Nicola Rennie does a makeover of a simple line plot and ends up with what she calls a “spaghetti plot”: a small multiple of a line plot, each highlighting a different line. Here’s the before and after:

My question is whether the greyed-out “background” lines in the small multiple are at all helpful. Because they are all next to each other, you can compare the shapes of the four lines easily. Why not just make four line graphs? 

• • • • • 

Lewis and colleagues introduce a special issue of articles that debuted in poster sessions be encouraging people to take more opportunities from poster sessions:

1. Preview the Poster Sessions. 
2. Don’t Be Shy! ... It can feel awkward or intimidating to walk up to the presenter, but that only lasts for a few seconds.
3. Like and Follow! ... (M)any posters include a QR code with contact information and resources for the attendees. These additional resources provide additional information about the topic and are a great way to learn more(.)
4. Look for Themes! 

Lewis KD, Stephenson KG, Brown KL. The Editorial Word: Learning. Journal of Advanced Academics: In press. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1932202X251400554

• • • • •

Huda and colleagues show that first authors who give a poster at a conference are more likely to attend that conference again than authors who give an oral presentation.

Huda T, Miller B, Miller C, Velasquez K, Garcia C, Razeq Z, Ajmal H, Fegahli T, Khan S, Gutierrez A. 2025. Trends in first-author retention in ASH accepted works from 2019–2024. Blood 146: 8217. https://doi.org/10.1182/blood-2025-8217

• • • • • 

A very short article with advice for poster presentations. Much of the advice is more, “Think about this,” rather than, “Here specifically is how you make this better.”

Mermelstein AD. 2025. Guidelines and suggestions for effective poster presentations. MinneTESOL Journal 41(2): https://minnetesoljournal.org/guidelines-and-suggestions-for-effective-poster-presentations/