Front-loading your headlines with your topic word just makes sense if your readers are going to encounter those headlines in online lists — a search engine results page, for instance, or your online newsroom.

That’s because readers look at only the first two or three words of the headline when scanning lists (Rev Up Readership members only; join Rev Up Readership). This technique is so important that usability expert Jakob Nielsen ranks it the No. 1 thing you can do to improve the ROI of your website.

But what’s the topic?

Too many communicators (and, let’s be honest, their reviewers) believe that the company or its product or service is the topic. But the real topic is the reader or what they reader can do, as these Silver Anvil Award-winning headlines demonstrate:

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

— Be the Match Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Teens Get Opportunity to Celebrate With an Idol

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

— State Farm Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Parents and teen drivers dangerously disconnected

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

— State Farm Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Color Your Easter with Eggs

HGTV Interior Designer Sabrina Soto Offers Easter Decorating Tips to “Dye” for

— Edelman and The Egg Board Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Before spring planting, expert says, “Dig a little. Learn a lot.”

— Natural Resources Conservation Service Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Cover Crop Mixes — They Just Work Better

— Natural Resources Conservation Service Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Survey: Cover crops deliver strong harvest amid drought

Agency focuses on helping farmers build resilient farms through soil health

— Natural Resources Conservation Service Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

JOIN THE TEEN DRIVER SAFETY CELEBRATION SUPPORTING NEW DRIVERS

Communities commit to drive safe in support of new drivers during National Teen Driver Safety Week

— State Farm Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign

Hey! Even the IRS is getting in on this approach. Here’s a recent newsletter headline:

10 Million Taxpayers Face an Estimated Tax Penalty Each Year; Act Now to Reduce or Avoid it for 2017; New Web Page Can Help

Don’t write about us and our stuff. To catch your reader, write about the reader and the reader’s needs.

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It’s counterintuitive, but true: The product is never the topic. The program is never the topic. The plan is never the topic. The topic is never the topic.

The reader is always the topic.

Here’s how six PR pros made the reader the topic in their PRSA Silver Anvil Award-winning campaigns.

Use the ‘Y word.’

The easiest way to write about the reader, in PR as well as in other pieces, is to use the magic word: You. That’s what PR pros did for these award-winning leads:

Use the imperative voice.

Here’s another approach to leading with the reader: Use the imperative voice.

We learned in third grade to call the imperative voice the command voice. And it can be a command: Do the dishes. Make your bed. Clean your room.

When we use it, though, it’s the invitation voice: Grab a spade … prepare your senses … dig a little … learn a lot.

Use a placeholder for ‘you.’

I actually prefer to avoid you and the imperative voice in media relations pieces. For one thing, who’s you — the reporter or the end reader? For another, I still like to retain an objective, third-person voice in PR pieces.

The solution? A placeholder for you: Community members. New drivers. Farmers throughout the state. Teens who commit to safe driving.

That’s how these Silver Anvil award-winners set up their stories:

Put the end user first.

Sometimes, the topic is just one or two members of the reading community. In this case, start with a placeholder for you anyway. Here, instead of leading with CHS Energy or its Tanks of Thanks rewards program, brilliant PR pros lead with the award winners:

Want reader interest? Take a tip from these Silver Anvil winners and write about the reader and the reader’s needs, not about “us and our stuff.”

The post Try second person for press release leads [Examples!] appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

You. It’s a power tool of communications.

The second person increases readability, boosts opens and clickthroughs and is the most retweeted word in the English language.

So lead with you whether you’re writing for clients, employees, reporters or visitors. Indeed, use the Y word when you’re writing:

1. Marketing communications

The second person was, is and always will be the recognized standard for brochures, sales collateral and other marketing pieces. That’s why the best marketing communications are verb-based benefits lists that sound like this:

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

2. Employee communications

C’mon. You’re not still referring to employees as employees in employee communications. Right? Overcome the distance between employees and the organization by writing directly to employees, using you or the imperative voice.

So instead of:

Employees must pick up new car stickers by Sept. 25

Write:

Don’t get stuck at security: Get your new car stickers by Sept. 25

3. Public relations

Communicators have long believed that there’s no place for you in media relations. Why? Two reasons:

1. News releases, conventional wisdom goes, require the third person for an objective, journalistic tone. But have you looked at a news outlet lately? Even the stodgiest now often use the second person.
2. Who’s you? Is it the reporter who receives the release or the reporter’s reader who actually reads the story? However, given organizations’ goals for releases today, this seems like a non-problem too.

I’ve seen enough PRSA Silver Anvil Award-winning releases use you that I’ve almost come around to the idea. But I still think there’s a better choice.

If you don’t want to use the second person in media relations pieces, you can still focus on reader benefits by using a placeholder for you in the first position in the release. That’s what makes this lead from a Silver Anvil Award-winning campaign lead so effective:

4. Multiple audiences

Remember back in the day, when Step 2 of the five-step communication planning process was “target your audience”? A whole step — 20% of the process — devoted just to answering the question, “Who’s you?”

But then — and, yes, I am aware of just how old this makes me sound — [read in creaky, old-lady voice] the internet came along, Sonny, and suddenly, our audience was everyone.

So how do you write to you when you’re not sure who you is? You have three options:

• Segment audiences. This remains the best practice. If you’re reaching out to investors, employees and consumers, you have three pieces. The bulk of the piece might be the same, but the top two or three paragraphs will change with the audience.
• Call out to readers. Not possible to segment? Then take David Ogilvy’s advice, and call out to your segment in the headline. Just add, “Mothers of Kindergartners:” or “Asthma sufferers:” or “Kansas City residents:” to the front of your headline.
• Let readers segment themselves. The National Institutes of Health used to have two doors on its home page: Doctors and Patients. That way, NIH could be sure that I never saw my doctor’s content, and that my doctor never saw mine.

Because the minute my doctor gets a high blood pressure article intended for me, she decides the NIH site is not for her. And the minute I get the hypertension piece slanted toward my doctor, I decide the NIH site is not for me.

That’s the problem with failing to segment audiences: Give people information that’s targeted to someone else, and you may lose them altogether.

This also works with social media. I live in Portland, a city divided by the Willamette (rhymes with damn it) river. A dozen bridges connect the east and west sides.

If my bridge is down, I want to receive updates from ODOT every five seconds. If your bridge is down? I never want to get bothered by it at all.

The solution? Let people sign up for the bridge feeds they want to follow.

Then you know who your reader is. Then you have no trouble talking to you.

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