How to write a press release headline

Remember, the verb is the story

When it comes to headlines, The New York Times’ leap into action: People, places and things arrest, attack, confront, explode, fight, grow, spread, struggle and work.

News release headlines, on the other hand, are far less active. There, organizations tend to announce, launch and report.

“A story is a verb, not a noun,” writes Byron Dobell, former editor of Esquire. Something should be happening here.

If the verb is the story, then release headlines tell the same story over and over again. And it’s not a very compelling tale.

Write like the Times.

We recently analyzed the verbs in 100 PR Newswire headlines and compared them to the verbs in 100 headlines from a recent issue of The New York Times. (We skipped the sports pages.)

“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

— David Ogilvy, father of advertising

Whether you’re writing a list post, social media, content marketing or another piece of content, to grab reader’s attention with great headlines, steal these tips from the Times:

1. Tell the story.

Headlines should tell the story; they shouldn’t just tell about the story. Instead of, for instance, announcing in a headline that you’re announcing something, just announce it.

Instead of:

Fortescue Announces Termination With Respect To Its Invitations To Tender For Sale In Exchange For Cash Certain Of Its Debt Securities

Write:

Fortescue Terminates Invitations To Tender For Sale In Exchange For Cash Certain Of Its Debt Securities

Instead of:

Harwood Feffer LLP Announces Investigation of Resonant, Inc.

Write:

Harwood Feffer LLP To Investigate Resonant, Inc.

Instead of:

New Source Energy Partners L.P. Announces Timing of Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2014 Financial Results and Conference Call

Write:

New Source Energy Partners L.P. To Hold Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2014 Financial Results and Conference Call on March 19

Terminates, investigates and holds are power words — much stronger verbs than announced. And they tell the story instead of telling about the story.

What are the key takeaways from your story? Encapsulate those to write catchy headlines.

2. Use sexy verbs.

If the verb is the story, then the sexier the verb, the sexier the story. That’s why I love the cheeky verb in this headline, from Vitaminwater:

Spank those naughty little oxidants.

Don’t be afraid to use sexy verbs. I myself am trying to get the verb spank into one of my release headlines. Any suggestions?

3. Think action.

To write compelling headlines, use athletic verbs — those that show that things are happenin’ at your organization. Model the strong verbs in these two Wall Street Journal heads:

Stocks Roar Back Late in Day

Medicare Flip-Flop Roils Elderly

4. Avoid ‘PR verbs.’

Sadly, the verbs we use most often in press releases are not sexy or athletic.

We are sorry to announce that announces heads that list. According to Schwartz MSL analysis of 16,000 Business Wire releases, the action words PR pros use most often are:

• Announces: 13.7% of the time
• Launches: 2.4%
• Partners: 1.8%

What? No introduces?

Oh, well. At least announces, launches and partners are active verbs, written in the present tense.

5. Write in the active voice.

Enough said.

6. Write in the present or future tense.

To write a good headline, make your story immediate instead of historic.

7. Don’t bury the verb.

Is your verb the second or third word in the headline? Or is it buried behind a nine-word product name or the names of each of your company’s 17 project partners?

Bury the verb, and you bury the story. Don’t do that to your target audience. Here’s a headline formula to remember: The closer your verb is to the front of the headline, the easier it is to understand.

8. Don’t drop the verb.

Chris Smith, the brilliant editing guru at Entergy Corp., reminds us — in haiku, no less — of what happens when we neglect our headline verbs:

Readers stayed away.
Did your headline have a verb?
I didn’t think so.

So for gosh sakes, don’t commit verbicide. These headlines got passed through the de-verb-o-rizer a few times before publication:

17th Edition of the L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Awards

Air Pollution Control Equipment: Technologies and Global Markets

Carbon Capture, Utilization & Storage Technologies

Global Markets and Technologies for Medical Lasers

Drug Discovery Technologies, BCC Research

In fact, one in 10 of the news release headlines we reviewed were label heads. You can do better: Don’t let your verb go missing in action.

Get read. Get shared. Choose verbs.

One side benefit to boosting your verbs: Verbs get shared more often than nouns, adjectives and adverbs, according to HubSpot viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella.

He analyzed Facebook data to study the relationship between parts of speech and Facebook sharing. One finding: Verbs get shared more often on average than any other kind of word.

On average, five times as many people read headlines than read the news story. Good headlines can boost everything from readership to conversion rates.

Those are among the reasons headline writing is so important. To make sure your headline is worth reading and sharing, focus on the verb.

You don’t need a headline analyzer for that!

Learn how to optimize your headline for search engines.