Written By Barbara K. Mednick, Online PR Expert

What is the most important part of a news release that determines whether it will get picked up by a media outlet and earn your company/organization valuable coverage? The answer: a powerful headline.

Make headline appealing

Editors and journalists receive and review hundreds of news releases each day to determine which ones seem interesting enough to read. Whether they receive the news release directly via mail or email or view it online, they often decide whether or not to use it depending on how appealing the headline is. This is particularly important for online PR due to the growing number of news releases sent out daily.

Make their job easier

Each day editors and reporters are deluged with news releases, email pitches, phone calls, etc. from numerous sources and are constantly under deadline pressure. In addition, many print journalists are even more harried than in the past due to staff reductions and the added responsibility of writing web content along with news articles. They have lots of options to choose from and not a lot of time, so they learn to filter out the good from the bad – usually by quickly scanning the headline of the news release. So make their job easier and pique their attention by writing a more powerful news release headline.

Cut the hype

Journalists are also a cynical bunch. If the headline is boring, full of jargon or has too much “fluff” or “hype” in it, you can be sure they will bypass it quickly, hit the delete key or make sure it ends up in the circular file. This can also happen if the headline seems too good to be true or lacks “newsworthiness”.

For example, if you write a headline that says “Anti-Aging Skin Rejuvenation Technology Erases All Wrinkles”, the media will probably throw it in the trash because they know that isn’t possible. But, if you write a headline that reads “Breakthrough Anti-Aging Skin Rejuvenation Technology Makes Skin Look and Feel Younger “, there is a higher likelihood that they will read it.

Consider news criteria

Following are the criteria that most media use to determine whether or not a story is newsworthy:

• Timeliness – did it happen recently? Is it connected with a current trend that has been getting a lot of attention recently?
• Proximity – is it in the geographical area targeted by the media organization?
• Impact – will it affect a lot of people? Does it have consequences for the audience?
• Prominence – is someone famous involved? Is it important to the audience?
• Conflict – does it involve conflict, which captivates the attention of the audience?
• Novelty – is it unusual?

Headline writing tips

Following are the top tips to help you write a powerful headline that will grab the media’s attention:

1. Write like a journalist by making the headline compelling, concise, factual and punchy.

• Follow Associated Press (AP) style, which is what most journalists use.

2. Write a powerful, newsworthy headline after you have drafted the news release.

• Consider news criteria to write a headline that has a strong “news hook”.
• Use active verbs as much as you can and avoid the passive voice.

3. Strive to be clear, rather than clever.

• Make sure your headline clearly reflects what’s covered in the body of your news release.
• Focus on answering as many of the “who, what, when, where, why and how” questions in your headline as possible.

4. Make sure the headline is accurate, not misleading.

• Don’t try to trick editors by writing a misleading headline that could cause you to lose all credibility once they realize the headline is not accurate.

5. Write a concise headline that clearly delivers your message.

• Write a short headline that gets the point across in 10 words or less.
• Write several versions of your headline until you achieve a good mix of brevity and clarity.
• Consider writing a main headline and then subhead beneath it to add more detail.

6. Write a “Google-friendly” headline.

• Optimize your news release by incorporating the main keywords in the headline, which will give it higher rankings in the search engines (i.e. Google, Bing, etc.)

7. Eliminate jargon, abbreviations and acronyms.

• Jargon is vocabulary used within a specific company or industry and is often meaningless to outsiders, especially journalists.
• Acronyms are another kind of jargon that can end up looking like “alphabet soup”.

8. Consider a headline with “lists” or “tips” – the media loves these types of stories.

• Example: “Survey Lists the Top Five Most Livable Cities in the U.S.”

So, if you fail to attract the media’s attention with a concise, punchy and newsworthy headline, there is little chance they will read the news release, run the release or use it as a background for a news story.