Newspaper Writing Tips - How to Write Copies That Will Make Headlines

1. First thing to do is to make sure that the story that you would like to cover is recent and newsworthy. Instead of giving out tips and how-to guides, write about the things that are currently happening in the government, in politics, and in the worlds of entertainment and sports. You'll also be able to capture the attention of your target readers if you talk about controversial issues from around the globe.

2. Use enticing headlines. You cannot afford to use lousy headlines when writing for newspapers. Keep in mind that your target audience will only read your articles if your headlines are powerful, benefit-driven, intriguing, or thought-provoking. Learn and master the art of creating such headlines through constant practice, by asking tips from professional news writers, and by taking advantage of relevant seminars and training programs.

3. Offer the juiciest information upfront. Use the inverted pyramid technique when writing your news copies. This will help you hook your readers in. Tell them exactly what happened on your first paragraph without using fillers and lengthy introductions. You can then present quotes and supporting details on your succeeding paragraphs.

4. Offer complete information. You shouldn't miss any part of the puzzle so you can avoid leaving your readers confused or unsatisfied. Take all the time that you need when researching your chosen stories and ensure that you get complete, detailed information. Interview all those people who have witnessed what happened and those who are considered experts on the subject matter so you can easily fill your articles with useful and complete information.

Tips to Writing a Great Attention Grabbing Headline

How Good Headlines Will Grab And Hold Your Readers Attention, Then Entice Them Into Your Article.

Writing a great attention grabbing headline for your ad, article or blog post is as important as writing a good headline for a newspaper. You need to grab your visitors attention in the few seconds you have them on your page, and you need to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques as well. Keep on reading to discover examples of attention grabbing headlines.

Your great, attention grabbing headline needs to have good keywords, so your creative freedom starts to be diminished. Did you know that you also have the option to write a great subtitle in most cases? A subtitle lets you increase the attention of your readers as they will read the subtitle as well as the title.  When choosing what to use for your attention grabbing headline and subtitle, what is the best option to use?

Questions are good. People love to have questions answered. If you're using a question, make sure you ask one your readers will have an interest in having answered. It creates curiosity.

People like to be shocked. Read the magazine headlines and tabloids to prove the point. Readers also like humour, ideas that are new and exciting, to be stunned and everyone knows sex sells.

So let's examine some of the options I could have used for:

The Curiosity Question:

"Are your readers glued to your page, forced to read on, because you create emotional hooks in your headlines?

The Identification Question:

"Who else has trouble creating an attention grabbing headline that sucks your readers into your article?"

The Scientific Method:

"Newest Research Show That 62% More People Click On Emotionally Charged Headlines"

- I made up the percentage, but you can see the idea.

Sexy (suggestive) Headline:

"Enticing Headline Ideas To Draw In Your Readers Like A Magnet"

New and Exciting:

"Brand New Never Before Seen Ideas To Creating Exciting Headlines Easily"

Secrets Revealed:

"Jealously Guarded Copywriting Secrets To Writing Compelling Headlines Revealed"

Solving A Problem:

"How To Write Compelling Headlines In 3 Easy Steps"

Humour:

"How A Great Headline Affects Your Bottom Line"

Authoritative:

"Learn How To Create Attention Grabbing Headlines In Less Than 5 Minutes"

Writing a great headline takes time. Write down several options before you choose the final one. That is what professional copywriters do. Take your time to craft your headline that will catch your readers attention and compel them to read your entire article or copy.

Website Writing Tips - 3 Powerful Promotional Types of Headlines

Headlines are the first text that visitors see when they open your website. When headlines are effective, they urge your visitors to explore the rest of the web page. This increases the likelihood that they will continue reading and take action.

Here are three types of headlines to promote your product or service: the How To, the Question and the Command headline.

The How To Headline

This is a great one to build up your headline writing muscles. Once you feel comfortable with How To headlines, you can experiment with other types. Or if you prefer, you can decide to use only How To headlines. They work!

People are always looking for answers about how to do something. How to choose a financial planner. How to wind surf. How to prepare for retirement. And so on.

You can use a simple How To headline, such as How to Housetrain Your Puppy. The implied benefit is "no more messes," "no more getting upset," etc. You can make the headline much stronger by adding a timeframe or something unexpected. For example:

Timeframe: How to Housetrain Your Puppy in 10 Days

Something Unexpected: How to Housetrain Your Puppy Without Losing Your Temper

You can make the headline even stronger by using both a timeframe and something unexpected. Here's an easy and powerful how to headline formula:

How to (do X) + Timeframe + Something Unexpected

Using this formula, we can enrich the housetraining headline to read like this:

How to Housetrain Your Puppy In 10 Days Without Losing Your Temper

The Question Headline

An effective question makes your website readers answer it in their minds and want to read about the solution you offer. Be aware that a question that has a yes or no answer is double-edged. If the purpose of the answer is to weed out visitors who are not within your target market, then use it.

For example, an online business that sells stylish, trendy shoes for women might have a headline that says, Are you looking for an exciting variety of shoe styles and colors? The headline summarizes their product line. Those visitors whose shoe interest matches "exciting variety of shoe styles and colors" will say yes and continue reading. Those whose shoe interest does not match will say no and deselect themselves. Both the business and the visitor win.

However, if visitors are potential clients and the headline question causes an answer that suggests to them your service isn't what they are looking for, your headline is not effective. For example, let's say the same shoe business uses this home page headline: Are you looking for stylish red shoes? The visitors may conclude that this business only carries red shoes. If their answer is yes, great. They will continue reading. But if it is no, they may deselect themselves and click on to the next website. The business lost the opportunity to show them all the variety they offer.

The Command Headline

Command headlines boast big benefits. You can find great examples on magazine covers, such as Invest in Your Future,  Make More Time For Your Kids, Double Your Income, and Increase the Resale Value of Your Home Lose 10 pounds in 10 days.

Notice that in addition to focusing on a big benefit, the command headline automatically speaks directly to the reader because you is understood in the content of the verb. For example, (You) Double Your Income.

Now it's time to practice writing headlines for your product or service by starting with these three headline types: How To, Question, and Command.

Earn Extra Money From Home Writing Effective Headlines

Your headline is the first thing that grabs potential customers eyes when they see your article so that it can help you earn extra money from home. So you want to make sure that you have something in your headline that they want to see. If the title is creative enough it will help keep your reader interested in what you have got to say.

 The color red usually correlates with urgency or importance. If you don't like using the color red you could try black or text with yellow highlight in the background if red doesn't suit your sales page's color theme. In my own opinion I think it is a better choice to go with red as they create effective headlines easily. It is a color that can easily fit in with almost any color theme and do it very well.

Even if you are referring to someone else in your headline, make absolutely sure that it ultimately shows what it has to do with your prospect and how it can benefit them. And this benefit that is mentioned should often refer to your prospect and not any one else.

It is very important that your headline stands out from the rest of your font since we all know that the purpose is to get your potential customers attention and hold their attention through out the article. We all know that if we can keep their attention that long it will mean more sales in the long run so as to earn extra money from home.

For your headline you will want to keep the length somewhere in between 20 to 25 words and 4-6 lines. If you make your headline to long your prospect can possibly get disinterested and leave your site before you have a chance with them. That would be a waste of everyone's time.

Whatever your product or service, the better that you can relate it to the majority of your customers, the higher the chances are that you can get them to read your sales letter, and then hopefully purchase from you. If you can utilize these ideas, you ought to be able to create outstanding headlines in no time. So if you want to find out more about how to earn money from home check us out.

Headlines - 3 Tips to Writing Headlines That Make the Sale

Want to know the secret for creating promotional materials that make sales?

It starts with the headline.

You see, people are busy. They're only going to take a few seconds to determine if they want to spend any time with your promotional materials or not (whether that's an email, a web site, a sales letter or something else).

How will they make that decision? A big part of it will come from reading your headline. So if your headline doesn't pull its own weight, your prospects will most likely simply move on.

So how can you craft a headline that persuades your prospects to keep reading? Here are 3 tips to get you started:

1. Put yourself in the mind of your prospect. Chances are, your prospect landed on your site because they have a problem. And they're looking for a solution to that problem. And they're impatient because they're squeezing in searching for this solution in between taking the kids to dance class, sending a few last emails and figuring out what to throw together for dinner. (Okay, that was a very female-biased day, but men are equally as stretched.) So if they're not feeling confident they're going to find a solution, they WILL move on. And fast.

But, if you create a headline that embodies the solution, then they'll probably stick around and keep reading. For instance, a headline like this:

Give me 3 days and I'll show you how to make more money while working far less

If you're considering writing a headline like this, then your prospects are probably completely overwhelmed, exhausted, struggling to get everything done and not making much money. See how the headline entices them to read on because it promises a solution?

Here's another one:

Give me 3 days and I'll show you how to lose weight without crazy fad diets, pills, hours of sweaty exhausting exercise or feeling hungry.

(Ah, don't we all wish?)

Okay, so your prospect wants to lose weight and has tried a lot of things without success.

See how this works?

2. Give them a time limit. If you were wondering in the above examples why I had a time limit in there, it's because that resonates with people. Again, people are impatient. They don't want to wait years or decades for the solution to take effect (even if that's what it takes). They want to know the solution is within reach and it's a manageable time frame. So if you can frame your solution around something that sounds doable (a couple of weeks, days or minutes are best yet if you can distill it that far).

3. Use language your prospects will relate to. Whether it's language that resonates with your prospects (hours of sweaty exhausting exercise would probably resonate with prospects who don't like to exercise whereas it wouldn't with people whose hobby was running marathons) or using words like "Free" or "Guaranteed," making sure you pick the right words can mean the difference from a kick-butt sales piece to a so-so one.

And don't be afraid to simply tweak a couple of words. Sometimes that's all it takes to tweak a word or 2 to transform a blah headline into a sexy, profit-pulling one.

Michele PW (Michele Pariza Wacek) owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting LLC, a copywriting, marketing communications and creativity agency. She helps people become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. To find out how she can help you take your business to the next level, visit her site http://www.michelepw.com

Needed Writer - Writing Great Headlines and Slogans

In a great headline, a dog is never just a dog.

One punctuation mark can make all the difference. A colon can add significant meaning to the phrase "needed writer," turning it into a want ad-"Needed: Writer."

An expert advertising writer knows that creating copy for advertisements is much closer to composing a poem than writing prose, though this is may not be apparent at first.

Though some copy does read like a paragraph from the newspaper, passing along a few pieces of information, an advertisement is intended to do more than simply communicate. An advertising writer seeks to grab attention, deliver a meaningful message, and motivate a contingent of people to do something specific. Whether its purpose is to enlist volunteers at a soup kitchen or to sell expensive televisions, an ad must persuade people to act.

If an individual understands the message but fails to act, then to some extent the ad has failed, even if it succeeds in building awareness or establishing good will.

Of course, each prospective customer represents so many uncontrollable variables that neither the writer nor the ad is always at fault, but a great advertising writer keeps in mind that consumers rarely make purchases for logical reasons. Most people spend money for emotional reasons and later come up with the necessary logical arguments to justify their decisions: "Isn't the picture so much sharper than our last television?" or "Did I tell you it gets 36 miles to the gallon on the interstate?

As with poetry, we know ads require a special type of reading. We're supposed to read between the lines and pay attention to what's been left out. The awkward syntax of the "needed writer" grabs the reader's attention and, perhaps, piques her curiosity. An even better example is Nike's famous "Just Do It" tag line. The folks at Wieden & Kennedy who developed this slogan sought to capture Nike's brand and to communicate its mission, values and unique value proposition at the same time. "Just Do It" evokes an attitude or posture towards life with which Nike wanted to associate itself.

Great headlines and slogans become a part of popular culture and the public consciousness because they carry an invisible cargo that separates the Wall Street Journal from Macbeth. What distinguishes "Just Do It" from the slogan of that athletic shoe company that you never choose? Emotion. Nike captured an attitude with three words.

The power of "Just Do It" comes from the slogan's spareness, or economy of language. Less is more. To have used more verbage would have been to weaken the slogan. Think about how negative space in a photograph or graphic "amplify" the focal points. A rest in a piano concerto has the same effect. A great slogan distills that brand into its essence, and each word in an ad must carry its share of the message. A word wasted is money wasted. More text can dilute, rather than reinforce, the core message. "Needed Writer" and "Just Do It" get straight to the point.

Regardless of where or how you're advertising, a great advertisement makes an emotional connection with its target audience. Showing an understanding of a common desire or problem builds trust with your audience. They feel understood. When you offer a solution, they believe you and want for you to tell them what to do.

A great advertisement is more than a tool; it is a work of art.

An avid flyfisherman, outdoorsman, and traveler, Austin Church divides his time between helping his marketing and advertising clients sell more stuff with SEO copywriting, traffic generation, and marketing strategy and his own creative projects.

Article Writing Secret: Hyped-Up Headlines Help Boost Your Article Marketing Success

My clients often want to know how to make their articles stand out from the thousands that already exist in their marketplace. I encourage them to consider using alliteration in their headlines. What's alliteration you say? It's when you use words that all have the same sound. Check out the headline for this story as an example.

Here are a few tips I created to make headline writing a bit easier for you:

Don't force it.
Hey, if it's not there, it's not there. Look for a way to use words that begin with the same sound for a few minutes. If it doesn't come, then go with the old standby, "How to" or "3 Ways to" and move on.

Accompany the headline with an equally clever article.
You finally have a great alliterative headline, now what? You'd better have a funny, amusing or interesting article to back it up. The reader's curiosity is piqued, give him the information you promised in that great headline of yours.

Have a look at other alliterative headlines for inspiration.
Let's face it, these kinds of headlines can be a challenge. To make it easier, consider reading the work of others. Keep your eyes open because these headlines are used everywhere, magazines, newspapers, brochures - keep a file of these gems. It's worth it.

Here are a few from the undisputed kings (and queens) of clever headlines - The New York Post - for more inspiration:

PAYBACK'S A PITCH

MANIC MOB TRACKS THE TIGER [TIGER WOODS]

GANGLAND GALA AT GOTTI GRAVE

SALE SURVIVORS


Alliterate every word? Not so.
Not every word in your headline has to begin with the same sound. Conjunctions and prepositions such as: of, and, or, from get a pass. (Note: There are exceptions to this rule. Sometimes the first few or last few words in a headline have alliteration and all others don't.)

NICOTINE NAZIS ARE ASH-KING FOR IT THIS TIME!

BUGGED BRASS ORDERS JACKO COPS TO HUSH

TIGER BAGS HIS BABE


Don't forget your subheds.
It can be a risky move to use alliteration in your main headline. If it's too much for you, save your creativity for your subheds. This will move your readers through your copy swiftly and effortlessly - with a little flair.

Secondary headlines help, too.
Keep in mind these headlines don't offer a bevy of information. To connect the reader to the article, build a bridge with a secondary headline that clearly spells out what you're going to say. And it's a good idea not to use alliteration in the secondary headline either. Just tell it like it is.

There you have alliteration basics. Spice up your headlines with this bit of writing and watch response rates soar.