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That headline is too long. OK, maybe not, but PR people need to start pushing their writing skills to do more with less. This whine may appear to be a common vintage, but consider news release headlines.Google recently advised Business Wire to limit news release headlines to no more than 22 words. If a news release headline is any longer, Google spiders will skip them.
Think about that.Even machines capable of reading endless amounts of x’s and o’s at breakneck speed don’t want to wade through fertile fields of long-winded news release headlines.
Together PR Newswire and Business Wire pump out about 2,000 press releases every business day. I’ll bet some of them even contain news. So with well over 500K news releases a year to sift through, your news has to get through a very noisy channel filled with competing messages to reach your audience.
Consider these tips when crafting news release headlines.
Skip the News Release: Does this news require a release? Does this release need to be bounced off satellites so even remote Zambian villagers can pick it up on their cell phones? Not all news needs a widely-distributed news release to get the word out.
Information Hierarchy: Every line in a news release has a specific job to do. No one line can do it all. Uh Oh, I’m channeling my grade school basketball coach. You get the idea. Boil the news down to one concise, headline.
Cut the Crap: Buzzwords and puffy adjectives get executives all excited. This excitement fuels long-winded headlines that get past legal because they don’t say anything. And these headlines are a red flag to journalists sifting through hundreds of releases a day.
Practice Makes Perfect: Using messaging services like Twitter gets you into the habit of writing in smaller snippets. The end result is more effective and efficient writing.
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6 comments:
I tell practitioners on my team to use words as though they were dollars: use as few as possible to get what you need.
As for adjectives... Back when The Onion was good, they parodied the language used in news releases for video games and it was spot on. I think video game news releases used to invent new adjectives.
22 Words or less? Say it isn't so!
Our profession is endangered. . .
Sound advice. Thanks.
22 words is a very long headline. If you can't write a headline in 22 words, perhaps you don't really know the gist of what you are saying anyway.
Twenty-two words is terribly long for a headline. Besides . . . isn't that why God invented sub-headlines?
Great insight about Twitter, in teaching us to writer more concisely.
Never thought of that; but how many times have you had to reword a tweet to make it fit? I like Twitter more each day, I do believe.
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