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Decks — those one-sentence summaries under the headline — do the heavy lifting on web pages.
Indeed, according to The Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack III study of reader behavior:
I’m often amazed at the amount of energy writers put into perfecting the sentence structure in the fourth paragraph of their piece when those same folks toss off a headline in the 17 seconds before happy hour on a Friday afternoon.… Read the full article
Think of subheads as the icing on the cake.
Skimmers look at subheads to learn what content you’re offering on a web page, blog post or news release.… Read the full article
Callouts (aka breakout quotes, pullout quotes or pull quotes) are “the print equivalent of a sound bite,” according to the authors of The Newsletter Editor’s Desk Book.… Read the full article
Too often, editors crank out captions (aka cutlines) in the 15 minutes before happy hour on a Friday night.
Their loss.… Read the full article
“Help us with captions,” wrote Sue Grabowski, president of Grabowski & Co., in our recent member survey.… Read the full article
Stuck for a benefits headline? Browse these eight approaches for inspiration:
The simplest approach, this headline just states the benefit clearly:
To write a good benefits headline, list:
Here’s one secret of successful marketing copywriters: They steal.
Especially headlines. If a headline’s been proven to work in the past, good direct mail copywriters will use it again and again.… Read the full article
One way to avoid repeating yourself in your news headline and deck: Answer “What happened?” in the headline and “Why?” in the deck.… Read the full article
