Seven ways to polish your traditional headlines

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.

A head for news — **Break the news** Tell the story, don’t tell about the story in your news head. *Image* by *Flood G.*

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

Instead of telling about the story …	… tell the story
Moves and milestones	Phil Smith named product manager, Program Development
Success stories	E-commerce group sells out at Eurocomm trade show
Benefits changes announced	Hallmark doubles profit-sharing contribution
New survey tracks industry trends	More communicators measuring ROI, survey says

Here are seven other steps for making your news headline more compelling:

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“Every good title is a short story.”

— Russell Banks, American writer of fiction and poetry

Heads up on headlines

How to perfect the most important words in your message

By the time you’ve written your headline, David Ogilvy used to say, you’ve spent 80 cents of your communication dollar.

Heads up on headlines — **See headlines in a new way** Display copy gets the biggest ROI of all the copy you write. Why, then, are so many headlines so lame? *Image* by *Trisha Descallar*

Display copy — headlines, decks, subheads, captions, callouts and so forth — get the biggest ROI of all the copy we write.

That’s why I’m often amazed the same folks who spend hours polishing the analogy in the 12^th paragraph toss off a headline in the 17 seconds before happy hour on a Friday evening. Most of your readers will never see the 12^th paragraph of your brilliant copy. But many more will read your display copy.

At Catch Your Readers — a two-day writing Master Class on April 20-21 in Atlanta — you’ll learn how to Lift Your Ideas Off the Page with display copy.

You’ll discover how to reach nonreaders with display copy; how to use proven-in-the-lab best practices for headlines, subheads and captions — even how to use display copy to make your message look easier to read (and if it looks easier to read, more people will read it).

Act fast: Just 24 tickets remain. Don’t miss out. Register now.