Learn from Other People’s Mistakes – The Headline

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About this lesson

It’s crucial to nail the headline, as that alone will determine whether people decide to read on.

Quick reference

Learn from Other People’s Mistakes – The Headline

It’s crucial to nail the headline, as that alone will determine whether people decide to read on.

When to use

When writing the headline of a press release.

Instructions

First write the press release, and then write a headline that best sums its content up. Ask yourself:

  • Does this headline work?
  • Would I continue reading the press release? Why or why not?

Here are some of the most common problems with the headline:

  • It’s too generic
  • It doesn’t provide enough information
  • It’s unclear whom the information is relevant to
  • It’s not timely
  • The context is unclear
  • It doesn’t announce anything new

A good headline should:

  • Contain the company name, thus contributing to branding;
  • Provide a clear description of the news;
  • Be related to local, regional, national or global events so as to be relevant;
  • Be of an appropriate length, about 69 characters with spaces;
  • Arouse readers’ curiosity;
  • Contain a keyword to implement SEO.
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  • 00:05 Hello, and welcome back.
  • 00:06 Let's see if we can learn from other people's mistakes rather making our
  • 00:10 own mistakes in the future.
  • 00:12 And yes, if there's one thing you're certainly going to remember after this
  • 00:16 course that would be that you have to have a catchy headline.
  • 00:19 As mentioned earlier in the course, it's so crucial to nail the headline
  • 00:23 because that alone will determine whether people will decide to read the article.
  • 00:31 Now let's focus on the headline.
  • 00:32 I'm gonna give you an example of a headline, and
  • 00:36 we're gonna call it a unique new business.
  • 00:39 So now ask yourself the question, does this headline work?
  • 00:43 Would you continue reading the press release?
  • 00:45 Why would you or why wouldn't you?
  • 00:48 So think a few seconds, think about this.
  • 00:51 Pause the lesson before finding out your answer.
  • 00:56 So you probably guessed correctly that the headline is too generic because which
  • 01:01 business are we talking about?
  • 01:03 Or who should be interested?
  • 01:05 It just doesn't provide enough information.
  • 01:08 The use of the word,
  • 01:09 unique, is ineffective because the context is not clear.
  • 01:14 It's neither timely or new.
  • 01:17 Using the word new, doesn't actually make it so.
  • 01:20 So if you've already read the first paragraph, you'll know that
  • 01:24 this press release is about unique, hand-crafted wooden cremation urns.
  • 01:30 So the question is, how could you make this headline more effective,
  • 01:34 more informative, and more timely?
  • 01:36 This is where we're going to do a crash course in copyrighting, okay?
  • 01:40 How about this?
  • 01:42 If we say,
  • 01:43 Ashes to Urns offers unique handcrafted solutions to rising burial costs.
  • 01:49 In this case, the headline is better in a number of ways.
  • 01:52 Why? Because it helps us with our branding
  • 01:55 since it contains the company name.
  • 01:57 It provides us with a better description of the product
  • 02:01 because we've got the phrase, unique handcrafted solutions.
  • 02:04 And it's timely because it refers to rising burial costs.
  • 02:08 It's also the appropriate length because this is about 69 characters with spaces.
  • 02:13 And it could arouse the reader's curiosity cuz they are left wondering
  • 02:18 what is the solution and it does imply a saving as well.
  • 02:22 So of course the phrase burial costs will come in handy, because for search engine
  • 02:27 optimization Google, Bing, and Yahoo would be able to index a useful keyword.

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