“On average,” said ad man David Ogilvy, “five times as many people read your headline as the body copy.  By the time you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent 80 cents of your dollar.”

Call it the 80/20 test: Your headline gets 80% of your audience members’ attention; the rest of your message the other 20%.

So how can you get 80% of the ROI on your message from your headline? Here are nine ways:

1. Think Like a Reader.

I once worked with a client on an article about customer service. The head:

Be A Customer Champion. Be Elite

About 250 words in — in an oh-by-the-way aside — the article mentioned that winners would get an all-expenses-paid trip to Vegas.

Here’s a winning marketing strategy: Giving away a trip to Vegas, a drone or an Apple watch? Mention that in the headline.

Here’s the rewrite:

Win a trip for two to Las Vegas

ABC customer service program honors XYZ

2. Call out to readers.

“If you want mothers to read … display ‘Mothers’ in your headline,” advised advertising guru David Ogilvy.

So call out to readers. Write headlines that start with IT managers, Business owners or Nurses, for example. I love this one, from Workers Compensation Board-Alberta:

Case managers: There’s an app for that!

Injured workers can now get claims updates on their phones

3. Use this headline formula.

Want to boost click through rates, engagement and sales? Here’s a simple formula to try for writing a great headline:

Write about your greatest benefit for your reader’s greatest need.

For communicators, that might be:

Sail through the approval process and go home early.

For semiconductor engineers, that might be:

Move from concept to simulation to prototype with a few keystrokes.

For gamers, that might be:

Level up your character to 85.

4. Focus on benefits, not features.

“Would you rather read a letter labeled ‘Dues Notice’?” asks Jeffrey Gitomer, principal of BuyGitomer Inc. Or one with the headline, “Build your business and boost your bottom line next year”?

Your conference isn’t a benefit. Your product isn’t a benefit. Neither are your services, programs or ideas.

What those things will do for the reader is the benefit.

Instead of:

Women’s Health Conference

Make it:

Revitalize your sexuality and justify your chocolate obsession

Instead of:

XYZ Company announces new disability insurance

Make it:

Get back to work faster with ITT Hartford’s new Ability Assurance

Instead of:

XYZ Company announces new product

Make it:

Grow bigger, lusher plants — and never have to water again — with XYZ’s SuperPlantGro

“It’s not about what you do,” writes Alan Weiss, consultant and principal of Summit Consulting. “It’s about what I can do after you’re done.”

Readers love benefits, because they focus on readers’ favorite topic: themselves. So don’t be afraid to layer on the benefits. Recreational Products Insurance published a brochure for agents with this head and deck:

Rev Up Your Sales

Launch more business with more products

Subheads continued to ladle on the benefits:

Crank up volume

Drive in profits

Collect a bonus

5. Use power words.

Benefits are verbs, not nouns. So to write effective headlines, focus on benefits-oriented verbs and verb phrases. Here are some to get you started:

These work for content marketing, digital marketing, email marketing, subject lines — even LinkedIn headlines and ad headlines.

So instead of:

New webinar helps managers improve productivity

Try:

Get all your work done in half the time, be the office hero, and go home early

(The latter, by the way, is one of my favorite marketing headlines of all time.)

6. Quantify and specify benefits.

While reviewing a marketing post for a client recently, I came across this headline:

Reap many rewards.

Well … that’s a little broad. It’s not very interesting, because it’s not visual. It begs credibility, because it sounds like the communicator couldn’t come up with any real benefits. And it could apply to virtually any product from virtually any company in virtually any industry.

If your benefits statements are too broad, they’ll come off sounding generic and meaningless. To make your message more concrete, compelling and credible, quantify and specify your benefits.

A participant in one of my writing workshops was working on a brochure to convince customers to move from paper statements to electronic ones. His first headline:

Save the environment with paperless statements.

I want to believe. But the benefit is so over-the-top, I just can’t. So I asked him to specify his benefit statement with a tangible, true detail. His rewrite:

Save half a tree a year with paperless statements.

One way to make your benefit more concrete is to add a numeral. Woman’s Touch Mammopad communicators, for instance, went for this broad — and to some women, somewhat discomforting — message in a brochure:

Discover the comfort of a softer mammogram. … Mammopad is like adding a woman’s touch to the procedure itself.

And the communicators buried this quantifiable detail at the bottom of the message:

Three out of four women reported a reduction in discomfort of nearly 50%.

So how about a headline like:

How would you like your next mammogram to be 50% more comfortable?

Hey, I’m happy with an asterisk to mousetype legalese if it allows me to write a quantifiable benefit.

Notice how quantifying and specifying make this envelope teaser for the World Wildlife Fund more powerful:

Every day an estimated 800 dolphins, porpoises and whales will die …

… unless you act now

Yikes! I’m writing a check before I’ve opened the envelope!

The more you know about your products and services, the more specific you can be. So drill down. Study the spec sheets. Ask questions.

Learn enough about the people, places and things you’re promoting to quantify and specify.

7. Add a numeral.

Speaking of numerals …

Next time you hit the Safeway, take a look at the magazines displayed at the checkout counter. Chances are, you’ll find that they’re packed with numerals.

There’s a good reason for that: Headlines with numerals, like Top 10, promise quantifiable value. And that draws readers. “Numbers sell,” writes Richard Riccelli, president of Post Rd, Inc.

Whether you’re writing a tipsheet or service story, a blog post or a marketing piece, add a numeral to the headline. That will increase your message’s chance of getting opened, read and shared.

Add numerals online. Numerals are power tools that get:

1. Shared in social media. Articles with numerals in their headline tend to be shared more on Facebook than stories without digits, according to research by viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella.
2. Engagement on blogs. My year-end roundup posts of PRSA’s Issues & Trends blog always score Nos. 1 or 2 for the year, according to editor John Elsasser. That’s because they include numerals, like “7 writing tips for the New Year.”
3. Attention on webpages. Numerals are more scannable, according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen. And they deliver tangible facts, which is what web visitors seek online.
4. Readership of releases. News releases with numerals in the headline performed better than those without, according to a study by PR Newswire.
5. Opened in email. EmailLabs ran a split test of these three subject lines:

Using Link Click-Through Tracking to Segment Your List

3 Tips to Improve Your Newsletter’s ROI

Build Your List Through “Piggy-Back Marketing”

The subject line promising “3 Tips” produced both higher open and click-through rates than the other two.

Select the right numbers: To choose the best numerals for your headlines:

1. Favor odd numbers. Oddly, odd numbers sell better than even ones, according to Folio: So 7 Steps may be more effective than 10 Tips.
2. Choose specific numbers. “101 or 99 work better than 100,” Riccelli writes. “65 is better than 75.” 59 seconds is more specific than one minute, for instance.
3. Better yet, make it 7. That number seems to appeal to readers. The number 13, on the other hand, does not.
4. Don’t overwhelm readers. I’m not looking for “66 steps to 6-pack abs.” “Saying ‘35 best exercises’ is too many,” Men’s Health editor Dave Zinczenko told The New York Times. “But ‘789 great new tips for summer’ is fine. That says value without saying work.”
5. But don’t underwhelm readers, either. Posts with headlines promoting seven or more items outperformed those with six or fewer, according to an internal study of HubSpot’s blog. While HubSpot still posts pieces with six or fewer items, writes Pamela Vaughan, HubSpot’s lead blog strategist, the inbound marketing experts don’t promote that quantity in the headline.
6. Avoid numbers for serious subjects. “14 ways to deal with breast cancer,” for instance, sounds flip.

So instead of:

Increase profits

Take a tip from Ann Bloch, principal of Ann Bloch Communications, and try something like:

Do 3 things you hate … and watch your income double

Or steal a trick from the tabloids with something like:

Lose 7 pounds a week without drugs or a diet

8. Develop a vignette.

Keynote speaker Tom Antion suggests:

Speaking puts me in a higher tax bracket

Maybe it can do the same for you

9. Get found by search engines.

At Wylie Communications, we use SEMRush to help us find the right search terms.

And we use SEMRush’s SEO Writing Assistant for Google docs for help writing pages and posts. It includes help for headline writing, as well.

SEMRush has helped us boost our search results. We think it can help you, too. (We are not affiliated with SEMRush; we share it just because we like it.)

How to write a good headline

Ready to write? Here’s a quick checklist to run on your marketing headline. Does your headline:

• Think Like a Reader? Does it focus on what readers want, not what you want from readers?
• Call out to the reader? Have you started with IT managers, Business owners or Nurses, for instance?
• Use a proven headline formula? Are you writing about your greatest benefit for your reader’s greatest need?
• Focus on benefits, not features? Does it cover what readers can do with your Whatsit, not on your Whatsit itself?
• Use power words? Do you use verbs and verb phrases like Make money, Save time, Avoid effort?
• Quantify and specify your benefits? Are they tangible and credible instead of generic and meaningless?
• Include a numeral? Do you demonstrate the quantifiable value you deliver in your message?
• Draw readers in with a vignette? Do you show how great readers’ lives could be with your services?
• Include searchable elements? Did you use online tools to make sure your headline is optimized for search engines?

If so, it’s time to press Send.

Keep building your skills

Check out these resources for improving your headlines and marketing messages:

• How to write a good headline: Make the most of the first element readers see
• How to write a press release headline: 57% of news audiences read little else
• How to craft persuasive writing: Grab readers’ attention and move them to act
• Polish your skills with writing workshops: Learn headline writing, marketing writing & more
• Get better every day: Join our members-only training and coaching site

The post How to write a marketing headline appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Consider the numbers:

• Readers spend 56% more time looking at headlines than at text, according to the Eyes on the News study by The Poynter Institute.
• Some 57% read just the headlines, the headlines and a sentence or two or headlines and just one or two stories, according to a Harris Interactive poll.
• A catchy headline in the No. 1 way to get audience members to read your news, according to the Harris research.

How do you read the news — in print or online?
	Item	Total %
	I normally just read the headlines, but maybe one or two stories in full	34
	I skim the full article	25
	I read every word in the article	19
	I normally will read the headlines and a few sentences into most stories	15
	I normally read just the headlines	8
Source: Harris Interactive Poll Note: Responses may not add up to 100% due to rounding

That means the best way for you to get the word out in your press release is through your headline. And, if you don’t get attention by writing a great headline, your audience may never read the rest of the press release.

So how do you do that? Here are 7 steps for writing great press release headlines:

1. Focus on your readers.

Too many communicators (and, let’s be honest, their reviewers) believe that the company or its product or service is the topic of the release. But the real topic is the reader or what the reader can do.

Just listen to what journalists say:

• Journalists’ biggest pet peeve: releases that aren’t relevant 
to the target audience. — Greentarget survey of journalists
• “The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did a study in which interviewers asked readers who or what was most important to them. Their answer was surprising. 
Many did not say their families, children or God. Instead, their answer was: ‘Me.’” — Dick Weiss, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• “There’s nothing wrong with a story about a new product. But readers want to know, ‘How am I going to use it?’ I’m not interested in ‘new and improved.’” ​​— Stephany Romanow-Garcia, 
senior process editor, Hydrocarbon Processing
• When asked how to get a release covered by Forbes, Bruce Upbin, senior editor at Forbes, replied, “Present the key element that explains how your story can benefit Forbes readers.”
• “What I really like about a release is when it scratches my reader’s itch and not your client’s itch.” — a trade journal editor quoted in PRSA’s Tactics

Despite all of this, “Organizations write press releases for themselves, not for readers,” writes frustrated PR pro.

Well, not all organizations. While I still see “XYZ Company announces ABC” as the headline in Everybody’sNewsroom.com, at a much higher level, PR pros are using what I call Selfish Altruism. That is, they’re writing about the end user, not themselves. And in doing so, they are getting more coverage, engagement and bottom-line business results for their releases.

Who are those folks? PRSA Silver Anvil Award-winners.These pros earn top national awards for campaigns that earn their organizations money, get laws passed and otherwise change behavior. Not for clicks, clips and comments — but for bottom-line business results.

So why not steal best practices from the top-performing P.R. campaigns in the country? Here’s what I see at that highest echelon of press releases:

Blood cancer patients and advocates visit Capitol Hill to inspire continued support for Be the Match

July 18 Legislative Day event aimed at delivering more cures to patients in need

10 million taxpayers face an estimated tax penalty each year

Act now to reduce or avoid it for 20xx; new webpage can help

Parents and teen drivers dangerously disconnected

New State Farm survey reveals an alarming gap between parents’ and teens views on driver safety licensing laws

Take a tip from these Silver Anvil Award winners: Write headlines that focus on what your audience members can do with your product — not on the product launch itself. That’s the way to get great media coverage and great KPIs.

(Note: A laser focus on the reader also helps you get results in social media and other digital marketing efforts, as well.)

2. Choose better verbs.

When it comes to headlines, The New York Times’ leap into action: People, places and things arrest, attack, confront, explode, fight, grow, spread, struggle and work.

“A story is a verb, not a noun.” Something should be happening here.

— Byron Dobell, former editor of Esquire

News release headlines, on the other hand, are far less active. There, organizations tend to announce, launch, introduce and report.

“A story is a verb, not a noun,” writes Byron Dobell, former editor of Esquire. Something should be happening here.

If the verb is the story, then release headlines tell the same story over and over again. And it’s not a very compelling tale.

To write an attention-grabbing news release headline:

Avoid PR verbs. The verbs we use most often in press releases are weak and boring. According to a Schwartz MSL analysis of 16,000 releases on Business Wire, the verbs used most often in releases are:

• Announces: 13.7% of the time
• Launches: 2.4%
• Partners: 1.8%

What? No introduces?

Why say:

XYZ LLP Announces Investigation of Resonant, Inc.

When you could say, more clearly and with fewer words:

XYZ LLP Investigates Resonant, Inc.

Compare those to the athletic verbs in headlines that top news stories in the media outlets we wish to find ourselves in. Here, for instance, are two Wall Street Journal heads:

Stocks Roar Back Late in Day

Medicare Flip-Flop Roils Elderly

Don’t commit verbicide. These headlines got passed through the de-verb-o-rizer a few times:

Carbon Capture, Utilization & Storage Technologies

Global Markets and Technologies for Medical Lasers

Drug Discovery Technologies, BCC Research

In fact, one in 10 of the PRNewswire news release headlines we reviewed were label heads. You can do better: Don’t let your verb go missing in action.

And … Write in the active voice, present tense.

3. Focus on the front.

At this point, Google is sophisticated enough to know what your headline is about even if your keyword is not at the front of your headline.

Humans are less sophisticated. We tend to look at just the first couple of words of headlines in lists, like search engine results pages, wire services and your own newsroom.

So focus on the front. Don’t bury your story in a headline like this:

ROSEN, A LEADING, LONGSTANDING, AND TOP RANKED FIRM, Reminds Kandi Technologies Group, Inc. Investors of Important Deadline in Securities Class Action – KNDI

Instead, uncover your story by putting the topic up front, as Natural Resources Conservation Service does in this Silver Anvil Award-winning release:

Cover crop mixes — they just work better

4. Make it factual and free of hype.

On my desk is a New Yorker cartoon where a CEO is talking to his PR executive. “Here it is, the plain, unvarnished truth,” the CEO says. “Varnish it.”

Skip the varnish. One of my clients actually included this at the beginning of a news release headline:

In a move that sets the next industry milestone and reinforces its leadership position …

Your news headline should sound journalistic, not like marketing hype.

5. Think SEO.

At Wylie Communications, we use a tool called SEMRush to help us find the best search terms. Then we use SEMRush’s SEO Writing Assistant for Google docs for headline writing help. It includes information like character and word length.

6. Keep it short.

Here’s what a New York Times headlines looks like:

Once Again, the Earth Is Being Wrung Dry

Here’s what a press release headline looks like:

LIFE TIME FITNESS SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Announces the Investigation of Life Time Fitness, Inc. Over the Proposed Sale of the Company to Leonard Green & Partners and TPG Capital — LTM

At 33 words, that’s a paragraph, people!

We recently analyzed 100 headlines from PR Newswire and compared them to 100 headlines from a recent issue of The New York Times. (We skipped the sports pages.) Here’s what we found:

• Average headline length. Times: 8.6 words. PR Newswire: 11.2 — 37% longer than the newspaper of record in the United States.
• Median headlines length. Times: 9 words. PR Newswire: 11 — 22% longer.
• Longest headline. Times: 14 words. PR Newswire: 33 — 136% longer.
• Shortest headline. Times: 4 words. PR Newswire: 4. These are too short for good search engine optimization. Google prefers headlines of 5 words or longer.

I recently worked with a PR firm whose headlines were 21% longer than the combined average of three of its top targeted media vehicles.

Hey, PR pros: Would you like to see your story in The New York Times? Then why not write like the Times?

Bottom line: Keep your headlines to five to eight words — 25 to 40 characters.

How are we doing? According to the Schwartz MSL analysis of 16,000 news releases:

• The average headline was 120 characters — three times as long as recommended.
• 79% were longer than 65 characters — 63% longer than recommended.
• 2% were longer than 300 characters. That, Friends, is a long paragraph!
• The longest was 2,141 characters. That’s more than twice as many words as the average journalist reads in an entire release, according to Greentarget research.

Are you including too much information in the headline?

7. Don’t drop the deck.

The deck — the one-sentence summary under the headline — is one of the best-read elements on a page, according to the Eyetrack III study by The Poynter Institute.

Double your headline power: Make sure your press release template includes this key element.

Here, for example, is a headline and deck from a Be the Match Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign:

Blood cancer patients and advocates visit Capitol Hill to inspire continued support for Be the Match

July 18 Legislative Day event aimed at delivering more cures to patients in need

The deck can be a great way to make sure you cover only a single subject in your headline.

Here’s a quick test to run on your headline: Count its commas, semicolons, dashes and other punctuation. The total should usually be zero.

More than that? That punctuation can be a clue that you’re trying to cover too many ideas in your headline.

Tempted to write headlines like these?

Copper Wire Theft Rising in XYZ Service Territory; Thefts Pose a Safety, Reliability Threat

XYZ Company Plans Expansion of its Texas Eastern System; Shippers Sign Long-Term Transportation Contracts to Serve Northeast Markets

New California law bans home disposal of cell phones and common batteries; residents can drop off cell phones and dead batteries at XYZ Company stores

Move everything after the semicolon into the deck.

Write good press release headlines

Ready to write? Here’s a quick checklist to run on your headline:

Do you focus on the reader? Are the first couple of words about the end user — or about your organization and its new whatsit?
How strong is your verb? Are you writing roils and flip-flops? Or introduces and announces?
Did you focus on the front? What will people skimming your headline on a list learn about your topic in the first two words?
Is it factual and free of hype? Did you skip the varnish?
Will Google be able to find it? Did you use online tools to make sure it’s optimized for search engines?
Is it short? Five to eight words — no more than 40 characters?
Did you include a deck? Or did you drop the one-sentence summary under the headline that may be the best-read element on your page?

If so, it’s time to press Send.

Keep building your skills

Check out these resources for improving your press releases and headlines:

• How to write a good headline: Make the most of the first element readers see
• How to write a marketing headline: 9 ways to draw readers in, move them to act
• Get the word out with PR writing: Reach journalists, bloggers and readers
• Polish your skills with writing workshops: Learn headline writing, PR & more
• Get better every day: Join our members-only training and coaching site

The post How to write a press release headline appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Stop writing 103-word leads

Are you still smooshing all of the W’s into the first paragraph of your press release?

Stop that!

“If the copy doesn’t excite me within 20 words,” says one editor, “I won’t read the rest of it.”

You’d think PR pros would have noticed that the media outlets they wish to get published in write short, snappy leads.

Here, for example, is an 8-word lead by The New York Times:

Russia has a new enemy: the currency markets.

And here’s a 103-word news release lead:

Which would you rather read?

Your news vs. creation of the universe …

But don’t ask me. Ask the media.

“‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,’” says John McIntyre, copy desk chief, Baltimore Sun. “The creation of the universe has a 10-word lead!

“So why do you need 40 words to say that your chief accountant has just completed the necessary certification? The answer, of course, is you don’t.”

Are you ready to make journalists love you?

Want to learn more tricks for gaining better press coverage? Learn my full system for getting the word out via PR.

The post How long should your press release lead be? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Here are three ways to write news release headlines that readers want to read and that journalists want to cover:

1. Lead with the reader.

Journalists care about their readers. And their readers care about themselves, not about you and your stuff. So take a tip from these PRSA Silver Anvil winners, and lead with the reader:

Blood Cancer Patients and Advocates Visit Capitol Hill to Inspire Continued Support for Be the Match

July 18 Legislative Day event aimed at delivering more cures to patients in need

Teens Get Opportunity to Celebrate With an Idol

State Farm and Grammy Award Winner Kelly Clarkson team up for teen driver safety

Parents and teen drivers dangerously disconnected

New State Farm survey reveals an alarming gap between parents’ and teens views on driver safety licensing laws

Repeat after me: The topic isn’t the topic. The product isn’t the topic. Your organization isn’t the topic. The reader is the topic.

2. Use strong verbs.

“A story is a verb, not a noun,” writes Byron Dobell, former editor of Esquire. The verb is the story. Something should be happening here. So model the strong verbs in these two Wall Street Journal heads:

Stocks Roar Back Late in Day

Medicare Flip-Flop Roils Elderly

And avoid weak PR verbs: announces, launches, partners and introduces.

3. Don’t get your head cut off.

To avoid getting your head cut off by Google, social, mobile or readers, keep your headline to 30 to 40 characters or less. At 36 words long, this is a paragraph, people:

UPDATE – INVESTOR ALERT: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Commences an Investigation of the Board of Directors of Entropic Communications, Inc. In Connection With the Fairness of the Sale of the Company to MaxLinear Inc. — ENTR

But don’t make it too short: Google prefers headlines of at least 5 words. Shorter, and your release may not get indexed.

Learn my full system for getting more coverage with PR writing.

The post 3 tips for writing better PR headlines appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Here’s a quick tip for making more of your news headlines: Make sure you’re telling the story and not just telling about the story.

Your news headline should communicate the gist of your news story. That way, readers can understand your point, even if they don’t read the body copy.

Instead of telling about the story:

Moves and milestones

Tell the story:

Phil Smith named product manager, Program Development

Instead of telling about the story:

Success stories

Tell the story:

E-commerce group sells out at Eurocomm trade show

Instead of telling about the story:

Benefits changes announced

Tell the story:

Hallmark doubles profit-sharing contribution

Instead of telling about the story:

New survey tracks industry trends

Tell the story:

More communicators measuring ROI, survey says

To write a catchy headline, communicate the important parts of the story.

Want to write great headlines that attract attention and get your target audience to read the article or blog post? Here are seven more steps for writing news headlines:

1. Make sure it’s news.

If your story covers breaking information, a news head may be your best bet. If you’re just getting around to confirming information that your readers got six weeks ago, you need a different approach.

Don’t get me started on editors who try to pass off second-day (or second-month) information as news. Just leave it at this: If you’re in the business of “announcing” ancient information, you’ll soon convince readers that the folks in communications are the last to get the word about your organization’s updates.

2. Answer the question, “What happened?”

That, after all, is the point of a news headline.

3. Make a single point.

Here’s a quick test to run on your headline: Count its commas, semicolons, dashes and other punctuation. That punctuation can be a clue that you’re trying to cover too many ideas in your headline.

Tempted to write headlines like these?

Copper Wire Theft Rising in XYZ Service Territory; Thefts Pose a Safety, Reliability Threat

XYZ Company Plans Expansion of its Texas Eastern System; Shippers Sign Long-Term Transportation Contracts to Serve Northeast Markets

New California law bans home disposal of cell phones and common batteries; residents can drop off cell phones and dead batteries at XYZ Company stores

Move everything after the semicolon into the deck, aka the one-sentence summary under the headline.

4. Make it factual and free of hype.

On my desk is a New Yorker cartoon where a CEO is talking to his PR executive. “Here it is, the plain, unvarnished truth,” the CEO says. “Varnish it.”

Skip the varnish. Cut phrases that sound anything like these:

Expands leadership

Sets major milestone

In a move that sets the next industry milestone and reinforces its leadership position … 

Your news headline should sound journalistic, not like marketing hype.

5. Use dynamic verbs.

A story is a verb, not a noun, as one of the former editors of The New York Times says. That means the verb is the story. So forget lame verbs like launches, introduces and announces.

And for gosh sakes, don’t leave the verb out altogether. Label headlines are the No. 1 problem I see when reviewing corporate headlines to customize my in-house writing workshops.

Subject, verb, object is the best sentence structure for good headlines. And use present tense, active voice.

6. Keep it short.

Keep your news head to eight words max. That’s the number people can understand at a glance, according to research by The American Press Institute.

This effective headline, for instance, tells the story in just six words, plus a 13-word deck:

IRS Introduces New, Paperless Tax Filing

TeleFile allows taxpayers to file by phone — in as little as 10 minutes

At 16 words, this one’s harder to process:

XYZ Company Donates $80,000 to The Nature Conservancy for Shareholders Choosing Paperless Delivery of Annual Report

Want to make this headline work? Move some of the headline into the deck. That’s what that second level of headline is for.

7. Use consistent capitalization.

Choose either sentence-structure capitalization or title capitalization. Which style is best for your organization?

• Is your organization more informal, like USA Today? It uses sentence-structure capitalization, capitalizing only proper nouns.
• Or Are You More Formal, like The New York Times? It Capitalizes Every Word.

Whichever you choose, stick with it. Keep your headline style consistent.

Learn about search engine optimization for headlines.

The post How to write good press release headlines appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

When edible marijuana consumption spiked, the Omaha World Herald came up with this headline and deck:

Baking Bad

Police say edible forms of pot hit new high

List, rhyme and twist is just one way to come up with a stellar twist-of-phrase headline. Here are four techniques to try:

1. List, rhyme and twist.

Call it list, rhyme and twist:

• Start with a list of keywords from your article. Baking, maybe.
• Find words that rhyme with your keywords. These rhyming dictionaries will help. Maybe you’ll come up with Breaking.
• Find familiar phrases that include those rhyming words. See the phrase resources below. Breaking Bad.
• Twist the familiar phrase by subbing in your original key word. Baking Bad.

When a shortage of telephone numbers required that Colorado residents use area codes on local calls, the Rocky Mountain News newspaper headline substituted a rhyming word into a 1948 movie title:

Sorry, long number

This headline from a New York Times “DataBank” piece covering a blistering (and bearish) week in August played off a familiar phrase:

It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Economy

And eMarketer editors used this approach to create this line to head a story covering Playboy.com:

Silly Rabbit, These Clicks Aren’t For Kids

How can you list, rhyme and twist your way to a winning feature headline? Of course, you’ll avoid groan-worthy punny headlines. But when you use words that sound similar, you can come up with a good pun that’s worthy of the front pages of the New York Post.

2. Switch a vowel.

Copy editors for The Los Angeles Times dropped an “o” from a word to create this headline, an ACES award winner:

A circuit bard for Silicon Valley

Computerese isn’t the only language in the capital of high tech. Today, the ‘Hollywood for engineers’ unveils its first poet laureate

Want to write an award-winning headline yourself? Play with the English language. Try switching, dropping or adding a vowel.

3. Flip a phrase.

When a former aspiring governor from Virginia shifted gears, The Washington Post copy editors came up with this headline:

Now, the oyster is his world

Ken Cuccinelli has shucked off the sting of his Virginia gubernational defeat to find a new venture: Bringing a sustainable source of jobs to Chesapeake’s Tangier Island

One easy way to twist a phrase is to shift the order of the words. When New York magazine covered the story of angry residents calling the MTA’s removal of 81 trees “arborcide,” editors twisted the title of a best-selling grammar book for this headline:

MTA kills shoots and leaves

The Washington Post’s Jim Webster flipped and switched for this headline:

The man who put the mettle in the petal

A basement botanist helped revive the rose

How can you create a new phrase just by flipping the words in a familiar one?

4. Find phrases to twist.

How do you write an award-winning headline like this?

Party like it’s $19.99

Local decorator shows you how to entertain on a tight budget

Adapt titles or lyrics of popular songs, movies, plays, TV shows, ads, company slogans or product names.

And here are some resources to get you started. Plug your key words into these databases to find familiar sayings that include your terms:

• Common phrases: PhraseFinder
• Movie titles: Internet Movie Database
• Music lyrics: Lyrics.com

Get more wordplay resources.

The post Examples of puns in headlines appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Two professors from Texas A&M University and one from the University of the Andes aimed to find out whether concrete or abstract information was more:

• Understandable
• Memorable
• Interesting

First, the professors crafted a series of passages. Each passage was about 56 words long; all were written at about the same level of readability. Half the passages were abstract; the other half, concrete.

Next, they wrote a series of abstract and concrete headlines, including:

Then they asked 40 graduate students to read the headlines and rate them on such qualities as how interesting and easy to understand they were.

The students rated the concrete headlines much more interesting and understandable.

Concrete headlines, copy more memorable.

Finally, the researchers had another group of graduate students read the copy and headlines. After time had passed, researchers asked the students what they’d read.

The students remembered:

1. Concrete text with concrete headlines best of all
2. Concrete text with abstract headlines second best
3. Abstract text, regardless of headline, least

In fact, the students remembered the concrete text 70% better than the abstract text.

Bottom line: Concrete material is more understandable, more interesting and easier to remember than abstract information.

The researchers write: “Using more concrete language and content should have positive effects in making … text more comprehensible, interesting and memorable.”

Readers prefer feature headlines.

Readers prefer feature headlines — like “The Smell of Corruption, the Scent of Truth” or “Face to Faith” — according to a 2009 study by researchers at the University of Athens.

Not only did participants rate the feature heads more interesting, they also said they’d be more likely to read the stories.

But wait! There’s more! A catchy headline tops the list of elements that convince readers to read, according to a 2012 Harris Interactive Poll.

Write good headlines like the Times.

No wonder more than one in 10 New York Times headlines is a feature head. (This technique is not just for online dating sites.)

We analyzed 99 headlines in a single edition of the Times. (We skipped the sports pages.) Of those, 12 — about 12% — were feature headlines.

Steal a tip from the Times, and write headlines like these:

Riches to Rags for New York Teenager Who Admits His Story Is a Hoax

Stuyvesant High School Student Now Says He Didn’t Make $72 Million on Stocks

And:

The Odd Math of Medical Tests: One Scan, Two Prices, Both High

And:

Instead of Tenants, It’s Cats, Trash and Little Progress for Brooklyn Project

Clever copy isn’t just for dating profile headlines and ads on how to lose weight. Your readers will find themselves falling in love with clever headlines for social media, blog posts and other messages. Try strong action words and other feature headline techniques.

How can you surprise and delight readers with great headlines?

____

Source: Mark Sadoski, Ernest T. Goetz and Maximo Rodriguez, “Engaging Texts: Effects of Concreteness on Comprehensibility, Interest, and Recall in Four Text Types,” Journal of Educational Psychology 92, 2000, pp. 85-95

The post Why write a clever headline? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Stuck for a catchy title that will make people read the article?

Next time you’re writing catchy headlines for blog posts, email marketing, social media, online business communications or other pieces of content, try these types of headlines:

Alliteration

Here’s a catchy headline template: Use alliteration.

Alliteration occurs when you repeat initial sounds in nearby words: “Sweet smell of success,” for instance. It “makes your language lyrical,” says Sam Horn, author of POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd.

That’s the approach Eastman Chemical communicators used when they wrote this headline, summarizing some of the things the company’s R&D department had worked on recently:

Satellites, Soap and Succotash

And The New York Times used alliteration for this headline package:

Tutus and testosterone

Men behaving balletically

This approach can make a good headline.

Learn more about alliteration.

Graphic wordplay

When the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a photo of a sign from which the “R’s” were missing, copy editors wrote this headline:

Thief st ikes again

One approach for a catchy headline: Use type to twist a phrase.

Graphic wordplay can be as simple as a headline that says:

Make Fewer Mitsakes

The Minneapolis copy editors used graphic wordplay for this headline and deck:

He (subject) teaches (verb) grammar (object)

Mike Greiner is old-school about teaching students how sentences are built, despite what one student wrote: ‘You’re torturing us’

Copyeditors at the Omaha World-Herald earned an ACES award for a portfolio including this headline:

Space rock to get thisclose to Earth

Scientists say an asteroid hurtling our way will miss us by a mere 200,000 miles.

Scott Beckett, a copy editor at Scripps central desk in Corpus Christi, Texas, submitted this ACES award winner:

Education = More chances²

Grant gives San Pat students opportunities in math, science

(Note: Search engines don’t love these headlines. So use them for email, not listing posts.)

Half-and-half words

When Dixie Land (yes!) needed a headline for a piece about punishing workouts, the copyeditor for The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette wrote:

Exercism

Intimidating or spine-chilling physical psyche-outs possess a fitness center client

Can’t find the perfect term for your headline? Make it up! For this technique, you create a new word by gluing two old words together.

Indeed, several ACES winners coined words for their winning headlines:

Penitence goes mobile with new confession app

Software makes it easy to say, ‘Forgive me father, iSinned’

— copyeditors at The Detroit News

Short and Tweet

Twitterature: the new art of adding stories to your posts

— Marianne Tamburro, copyeditor for The Star-Ledger

Bon app-étit

As iPads become a kitchen staple, digital cookbooks enhance the experience of following a recipe

— copyeditors at The Oregonian

Dinosaurigami

More pop-ups from the ‘Prehistorica’ team of Sabuda and Reinhart

 — Gregory Cowles of The New York Times

One-word headlines

Here’s a headline formula that’s easy to implement: “See if there is ONE word that captures the essence of your subject,” suggests Horn. “A one word title is more likely to JUMP! off the page.”

Her own book title is a good example of this approach:

POP!

Stand Out in Any Crowd

Make your title jump off the page in a single word.

Onomatopoeia

Buzz, crash, whirrr, splash. Onomatopoeia — Greek for name-making — is a word that imitates the sound it represents.

Headline writers at The Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader used that approach for this ACES winner:

Squeeeak … Slam! Sniffff … Ahhhh!

Screen doors let in fresh air and nostalgia

Poignancy

Too often we think of feature headlines as clever heads for cute stories. The New York Times copy editors remind us that feature heads work well for emotional — even agonizing — pieces, as well.

Several ACES winners have used this approach for their award-winning heads. Copy editors for the Los Angeles Times, for instance, came up with this headline and deck:

Surrounded by her son

The mother of NFL player Chris Henry wanted to meet the people who received his organs. From one death, four lives were reborn

Don’t think of feature headlines as purely clever heads for cute stories. Expand your repertoire by writing poignant heads for touching stories, too.

Questions

“Declarations sit on the page,” Horn says. “Questions engage.”

Indeed, well-crafted question headlines can draw your reader in. To write a good question head:

Peggy Boss Barney, copy editor for the Salt Lake Tribune, posed a provocative question in this ACES award-winning headline:

What Do You Get When You Cross a Human With a Mouse?

A narrowing of laws on manipulating life, patent applicants hope

Question leads can help you avoid giving away the ending. Roy Peter Clark, editorial guru at the Poynter Institute, suggests that instead of:

Heroic measures save heroic dog

Brutis kept a deadly snake from his master and her grandchildren, but needed some quick help in turn to keep from dying from the bite

You consider:

Would heroic measures save heroic dog?

Brutis kept a deadly snake from his master and her grandchildren. Would the antivenin arrive in time to save the dog from dying from the bite?

Try it. As Paula LaRocque, author of Championship Writing, writes: “A headline with a question mark is inherently more open and engaging than a statement headline.”

Single-syllable words

Short words are powerful words.

They clip along at a brisk rate, can look great graphically and say a lot in a little space. Plus — sometimes most important if you’re writing to a strict space limitation — they fit.

To pack a punch in your next headline, try limiting yourself to only one-syllable words. Here are some examples to get you started.

For an article about taking private jets instead of commercial airlines in Northern Trust’s Northern Update marketing magazine, Loring Leifer wrote this pithy head:

Jet Set Go

Mary Forgione, copy editor for the Los Angeles Times, earned an ACES  award for this string of super-short words:

Life After Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz

In her book, an advertising lion reflects on making it in a man’s world

Jennifer Balderama, copy editor for the Washington Post, used only one-syllable words for this ACES award-winner:

Ears wide shut

Researchers get punished for telemarketers’ crimes

David Breen, copy editor for the Orlando Sentinel, slipped a two-syllable word into this headline, another ACES winner. But the clip of short words following it are certainly worth emulating:

Divorce: Log on, click in, break up

But critics say an online divorce is not hassle-free; others fear it’s too easy

Still, the real queen of the one-syllable-word head is Debbie Sprong, copy editor for the Elkhart Truth. She earned an ACES award for these heads:

Cap and gone

(For an infographic on graduation)

Poll vault

New numbers in Second District race show strong lead for Chocola

Time out

For many workers, lunch hour is more than a chance to eat

Waste not

Officials hope test plot proves merits of biosolid compost

Gregory Cowles of The New York Times earned an ACES award for a portfolio of heads including these:

Swing Set

A collection of picture books teaches children about jazz and its heroes

The Way of No Flesh

A cultural history of vegetarianism in the West

And Scott Beckett, copy editor for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, called out his short words in this ACES award-winning headline:

Nature’s 4-letter words: Wind, hail, rain

Violent storm destroys home, topples big rigs

For a preview of fall TV shows, Pat Myers of The Washington Post wrote:

Ewws and Ahhs

Too Many Shows Will Give Viewers the Creeps This Season, but a Few Noble Souls Save the Day

Steve Byers of the Huntsville (Ala.) Times limited himself to one-syllable words for this headline:

The spies who love me

Scared parents of teens spending on surveillance

Jeff Verbus of The Repository (Canton, Ohio) had two winning heads using only super-short words:

Knock down, drag out blight

Mounting expenses won’t deter Canton from ridding city of eyesore properties

Bill to squeeze pop has juice

Senator proposes a limit or ban on sale of soda in public schools

Try writing headlines using only one-syllable words. The result may well pack more of a punch than headlines using longer words.

The post Catchy headlines for feature articles appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Note to self: “Label headline” is not a headline.

Label headlines like Label headlines carry a double problem. They skip the verb, so they suck the action out of your headline. And they don’t say anything about the topic.

That’s why serious communicators and publications like The New York Times avoid them. We analyzed 99 headlines in one edition of the Times, skipping the sports pages. Of those, just 7% were label heads.

Yet the most common type of headline I review as a writing coach is — by far! — a label headline. I’m convinced that most corporate communications, marketing and content marketing headlines are label headlines.

What’s a label headline?

Good news headlines “need at least two things … a noun and a verb.”

— Mary Pretzer, design columnist, Editor’s Workshop newsletter

This subhead could have said “Label headline definition.” But that would be a label subhead.

Label heads are those that identify the topic but don’t say anything about it. They are nouns or noun phrases without verbs.

“Every good title is a short story.”

— Russell Banks, American writer of fiction and poetry

Examples of label headlines

Here, for example, are a few of the label heads that have crossed my desk lately:

Bulletins

Meetings

Volunteers

Chemical update

Manager’s letter

Field distribution

Graphics systems

Strategy Statement

Tornado Chase Q&A

US Recruiting Trends

Health considerations

Disposable air cleaners

COBRA/HIPAA Process

Improvement by Transformation

Innovation & Growth Video Series

First-ever 3D virtual retinal display

A New Target in Healthcare Marketing

Systems Integration and Testing Facility

Modification to the NSA mission and vision

Manager’s guide to selecting a proxy or delegate

And … drum roll, please: The worst label head I’ve ever seen was on a sales letter encouraging me to increase the size of a directory ad. The headline:

Sales Letter

Why avoid headlines like Sales Letter when your headline tops, say, a sales letter?

Why avoid label headlines?

“Lose your reader with your headline, and you’ve lost the reader altogether.”

— Alan Sharpe, business-to-business direct-mail copywriter

Why avoid label heads? With label headlines, you:

1. Miss the chance to communicate. Headlines get twice the attention of text. They change the way we think. “Readers” might not read anything else. If your headline says nothing, you’ve missed your best opportunity to reach and sway the huge and growing percentage of your audience who just read the display copy.
2. Make your story dull and boring. While some readers get all of their information from the display copy, others use headlines to decide whether to read. If your headline says Strategy statement, I can almost assure you that readers will choose not to dive in.
3. Sap the energy from your story. Without verbs, your story has no action. Without verbs, there are no benefits. Readers can’t see what they could do differently with your product, service, program or idea.

How to fix label headlines

“Nouns are important, but the nouns must do something.”

— Pete Hamill, novelist, essayist and journalist

How can you fix label headlines?

1. Say something about the topic. If you find yourself writing “headlines” like “Graphic systems,” ask yourself “Graphic systems what?” Or “What about Graphic systems?” Are we for them? Against them? Should I get one if I don’t have one? Should I get rid of one if I do?
2. Add a verb. “A story is a verb, not a noun,” writes one of the former editors of The New York Times. That means that something essential is missing from a label head. Unless you’re writing a feature headline, use a dynamic verb in every headline. Bonus points for putting that verb in present tense.
3. Develop creative standing heads. You may want to use a label for the name of a recurring column or department. But surely, given all your talent and education, you can come up with something better than “Bulletins” or “Manager’s Letter.”

I’d like to buy a verb, please.

So instead of:

Charity Collection for Geneva and Africa

Write:

Help African orphans, vulnerable children, Manchester’s poor

Donate to XYZ’s autumn charity collection Oct. 15-31

Instead of:

Eighty two million and counting

Write:

245 XYZ employees take on the Global Corporate Challenge

Teams walk 82 million steps in 100 days

Instead of:

XYZ Talks registration — Behind the scenes at the Hermitage

Write:

Go behind the scenes at the Hermitage

 Learn about Russia’s treasured art collection at XYZ Talks on Oct. 10

Instead of:

HPV and throat cancer

Write:

HPV virus? You could be at risk for throat cancer

Get a free screening, answers to your questions, on April 16

Instead of:

Weather Update

Write:

Work from home tomorrow!

Please stay safe and warm during Detroit’s snow emergency, parking ban

See what a difference a verb makes? Stop labeling the topic of your blog post, article or content marketing piece. Start using your headline to actually say something about your story.

The post Avoid writing label headlines (Examples!) appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Barney Kilgore, the legendary editor of The Wall Street Journal, once wrote: “If I see ‘upcoming’ slip in[to] the paper again, I’ll be downcoming and someone will be outgoing.”

I’m with Barney: Stop ing-ing. Especially in headlines.

Now, to be fair, Kilgore’s comment refers to gerunds: verbs that get turned into nouns with the addition of an “-ing,” as in “Writing is fun.”

What I’m talking about are present participles, aka progressive verbs, as in “I am writing.”

Avoid present participling-noun headlines.

So who ever decided that “Present Participling Noun” was a clever headline? You’ve seen (maybe even written!) ing-ing headlines like these:

Hiring to Win

Taking Farming Further

Scaling the China Opportunity

Introducing A New App for Android

Committing to Our Ag & Turf Ambition

Introducing the Strategic Growth Incentive

Creating Meaningful Relationships at Work

Making dams safer for fish around the world

Announcing Our 2014 Scholarship Program Recipients

Transforming and Deepening Our Strategic Partnerships

Understanding Biofilm Roles in Reactions and Processes

Enabling better outcomes and lower costs through integration

Ending Child Trafficking through Collaboration, Awareness, and Support

So what’s wrong with “Introducing the Strategic Growth Incentive”?

Why avoid present participle headlines?

Ing-ing headlines like these:

• Focus on your actions instead of the reader’s needs. Instead of “Introducing A New App for Android,” how about “Get your job done in 12 minutes a week with new Android app”?
• Suck the subject out of the headline. We’re supposed to be writing about people doing things. Where are the actors in these headlines?
• Ing the action. The verb is the story. Ing-ing verbs are weaker.
• Just point to the noun. Instead of “Announcing Our 2014 Scholarship Program Recipients,” how about “2014 scholarship recipients headed to Harvard”?
• Take the benefits out of the headline. Which would you rather read: “Transforming and Deepening Our Strategic Partnerships”? Or “6 ways to jumpstart strategic partnerships”?
• Rarely get used by serious journalists. The New York Times, for instance, mostly avoids them.

Write like the Times.

We analyzed 99 headlines in the Dec. 15, 2014, edition of the Times. (We skipped the sports pages.) Of those, just four — about 4% — were ing-ing heads:

Stoking a Creative Spark

Stuart Shugg and Anna Azrieli in the DoublePlus Series

Stepping Back Into a Role’s Shoes

James Morris’s Unexpected Return to ‘Meistersinger’

Shaping a Shepherd of Catholics,
From Argentine Slums to the Vatican

‘The Great Reformer’: Austen Ivereigh on Pope Francis

Turning #IllRideWithYou Into Real-World Action in Australia

When you find these headlines in your own copy, rewrite. Make it subject, verb, object. Then you’ll wind up with verbs like:

• Stoke
• Step
• Shape
• Turn

Take a tip from the Times: Limit ing-ing drastically. Even better, stop ing-ing at all.

The post Stop it with the ing-ing headlines (Examples!) appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..