How to title your messages effectively
ByWhen you post up a message or write an article, the first thing that people notice is the title. Writing attention-grabbing headlines offer your readers an overview of what they can expect from your article and message. The following tips have been provided by Andy Bounds, an outstanding communications consultant. You can find out more about him here.
Don’t waste the opportunity to grab your reader’s attention
Titles are an essential part of communication. They’re the first thing others read. Newspapers employ experts to write headlines. Advertisers and publishers know a poor title destroys sales.
Yet, despite titles’ importance, people rarely spend much (any?) time thinking about them. Their titles usually simply describe the content… ‘Departmental conference’, ‘Our credentials’, ‘Q2 review’ and the like…
Don’t believe me? Check the titles of emails in your inbox. How many grab you?
Uninspiring titles set the tone for uninspiring communications. A simple, effective remedy: add an audience-benefit to the title (or, at least, subtitle) and you change the context entirely. For instance, would you rather receive communications called…
‘Departmental conference’, or
‘Ensuring next year’s even better’
‘Our credentials’, or
‘Where we can bring most value to you’
‘Q2 review’
‘Q3 preview: where to focus, to optimise results”
Action point
Review the titles of your recent communications – maybe read the titles in your Sent Items? Might benefits-rich titles have helped secure more buy-in, more quickly?
If so, spend more time thinking why your communications benefit your recipient(s). Include the main benefit in your title/subtitle, and see what impact this has.
WOW there some good advice here.
defo gonna use this again!
Thanks Ali! Nice to see you on here
Jen
Jen @ Blog writer´s last blog ..How to cheat at writing
interesting – I never really think about my email subject line as a place to write an attention getting headline. It’s good practice and a good habit to develop. Good topic!
Cheryl @aspiringfempreneur´s last blog ..Blogging Tips from Expert Bloggers and TV Stars
Thank you Cheryl – good to see you on here!
Jen @ Blog writer´s last blog ..How to title your messages effectively
Hi Jen. You are right, although there is so much mail I get these days that I am sometimes cynical. Last week I almost deleted an email to my office account which said “Congratulations! You are a winner!”, but I was lucky to recognise it was genuine and from a competition I had entered at a local fête. I suppose the majority of my emails are to work colleagues, and not to customers, and so I make an effort to put key facts (keywords) in to my subject lines so that they are easy to find in their mail-boxes. Private emails, of course, are different, but I don’t think i can share half of mine in public
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I agree – it’s getting harder to sort the wheat from the chaff with e-mails, especially when we sign up for so much ‘noise’. I lost a potential client for three weeks because I thought it was spam! Congratulations on winning your comp.
Jen @ Blog writer´s last blog ..On coping with success
Hi Jon – thank you for getting in touch! I so understand about nearly trashing the ‘congratulations’ mail – I think I would have, too. The worst thing about this is that while spammers have become savvy, and learned how to grab our attention, ‘real’ people have not all learned to be smart as you suggest, and utilise keywords. This means that we are at risk of losing the lovely, free nature of language as it gets appropriated by sales people
Jen @ Blog writer´s last blog ..How to title your messages effectively