Grammar Tips
Newsletter Production Tips & Ideas
Grabbing Some Attention
What is the key to
getting your newsletter read? It could lie at the top! Writing captivating
and interesting headlines is the best way to grab your readers’
attention. Your goal when writing a headline should be to capture your
readers’ attention and to compel them to want to read more. In order to
get this attention, your headline should evoke an emotional response in
your reader. Make them laugh, get them angry, stimulate their curiosity or
make them think.
Unlike a newspaper, you
can be a bit more creative when writing your headlines. Newspaper headline
writers must be direct, concise, and straightforward. Consider this
example of two types of headlines for an article in a newspaper discussing
an electric utility’s funding of public service projects:
Omaha Electric Gives
$10 Million Grant
or
Lighting the Way: Omaha Electric’s Public Generosity
If you were writing for a
newspaper, the first headline would be more appropriate. However, your
newsletter is not such a formal publication. You can be more creative in
your headline writing. The second headline would work better in a
newsletter.
One reason for this is
that a newspaper is read by thousands of people, all of who have different
interests and uses for the information that they receive. Your newsletter
is directed at an audience that is, in a way, pre-selected. That is, your
readers have an interest in every article you include in your newsletter
from the beginning. As part of a select group, such as employees,
apartment residents, or customers, your readers have an initial
acquaintance with your newsletter’s purpose and have already formed a
relationship to your publication. Thus, a newspaper headline must be
written in a way that allows the reader to decide if this is the type of
article he or she might want to read. Your newsletter readers already want
to read the articles in your newsletter. Your job when writing a headline
is to make them excited and interested in that particular article.
When writing your
headline, consider using a brainstorming technique. On a sheet of paper,
write down anything that comes to mind when thinking about your article.
For an illustration, we will show how to write a headline for an article
about pest control for residents of an apartment community.
You may write down things
like the following:
Continue until all ideas
are down on paper. From this list, you may choose one or two ideas that
you want to expand upon. For example, from this list, you may choose
“bugs.”
Try to use the same
technique again, but only on this one word. For example, we may come up
with the following: