A question I am asked regularly is: “How do I go about writing an informative and useful ‘about us’ page that people will actually want to read?” As a result I have written this post to give you the edge when writing one of the most important pages on your website. I hope that it is helpful.  Lets face it this page should convert just as well as any other!

The Five Steps

1. Consider: what are you trying to say?
2. Don’t forget your name or company name.
3. Relate any special skills or knowledge.
4. What are you currently doing?
5. Don’t forget your contact details.

Step 1. What Do You Want To Say?

When you are composing your ‘About Me’ page consider carefully what you need to convey to the reader.  Your reader will be interested in some basic facts about you; these should be presented in a specific order. Before you start to write the page it’s worth jotting down the things that you need to include.

Step 2. Don’t Forget Your Name!

This may seem quite obvious but it is surprising just how many people forget to do this.  You should state your name and qualify who you are in one concise sentence.

For example:

If you are an individual you may start with something like:

My name is Steve Mapes and I have worked in the construction industry for more than 25 years.

Or if you are a company you could use a sentence similar to this:

Purecontent.com has been at the forefront of web content creation for 3 years.

Step 3. Relate Your Special Skills.

State any of your special skills or knowledge that might be of use to a reader.  This is your opportunity to hit home with a marketing message by detailing any specialities and skills that will make you stand out from the competition.

For example:

I started literally at the bottom, regularly working on building sites whenever my studies allowed. I am now a busy project manager fully qualified in my field and specialising in multi-million pound projects in the Middle East.

Step 4. Your Current Position.

This is the section where you should bring the reader up to date with your current news.  This is very important as it reinforces what you are trying to sell or achieve.

For example:

My blog, constructionconsultant.com (which I started in early 2002) has the aim of keeping those working in the industry up to speed by reporting on the latest trends and technical developments. My blog also features current news and comment that I think will be of interest and useful to my readers.

Step 5. Your Contact Details.

This may seem the most obvious thing but it is often overlooked.  You should not rely on the ‘contact us’ page of your site.  Ensure that you include an email address and telephone number.  It is always worth offering to answer questions to try and initiate that all important initial contact.

For example:

I am happy to answer queries and can be contacted via email at: smapes@ constructionconsultant.com.

Put all the elements above together and you are well on the way to creating an effective page.

Finished page example:

My name is Steve Mapes and I have worked in the construction industry for more than 25 years.  I started literally at the bottom, regularly working on building sites whenever my studies allowed. I am now a busy project manager fully qualified in my field and specialising in multi-million pound projects in the Middle East.

My blog, ConstructionConsultant.com (which I started in early 2002) has the aim of keeping those working in the industry up to speed by reporting on the latest trends and technical developments. My blog also features current news and comment that I think will be of interest and useful to my readers.

I am happy to answer queries and can be contacted via email at: smapes@ constructionconsultant.com.

If you stick to this simple formula you will provide the reader with just the right amount of information. I am confident that you will soon start to get useful leads from your ‘about us’ page if you follow these simple five steps.

Google News has always been seen as the exclusive domain of very large websites with comprehensive brand presence: no more!

Just follow these 10 steps and you will be on your way to Google News Glory!

This post has been written to help get your site ready to be submitted to Google News.  Once you are accepted into the google news feed you can look forward to a captive audience of readers, more subscribers, free traffic and some great quality in-links straight to your site.  Each of the 10 steps of this system is detailed below. Happy news writing and good luck.

1.  Get A Top Content Management System.  WordPress is Best!

Having a great CMS is the first step to news management success.  Being able to add, edit and time stamp content easily will make your news story posting a walk in the park.  The flexibility to change the way your content works will allow you to be proactive if the feed rules ever change.  I would recommend WordPress, it’s free, fast and well supported.  You don’t have to have your whole site within this CMS, it can just serve the news sections if you wish, but it’s also really useful for any blogging that you may wish to do.  I have included a list of cool Content for SEO Plugins for WordPress at the end of this article that you may find useful. If you don’t like WordPress try one of these content management systems.? Movable Type, Drupal or Joomla

2.  Bomb Proof Hosting – Keep Your Site Live.

Hosting on a cheap provider is not always a very good idea.  You need a good reliable host that isn’t going to go down as soon as your thousands of readers click on your latest story.  Your server is just as important to your news work as it is to your standard SEO techniques.  You may not need to pay a great deal more than you are already for a very reliable service.

3.   Sort Out Your URL Structure -  Follow Google’s Guidelines.

URL structure is a vital element with very specific rules that need to be followed. The following requirements are very simple to implement on a CMS that allows bespoke URL’s such as WordPress permalinks.

A: Unique URL

Each page of your news content must have its own unique URL.  If your articles are all displayed on one page, such as a /news.php, the stories will not be accepted.  This is a vital point, each story must have its own page for the spider to crawl it properly.

B: Permanent Links

Your links need to be permanent to ensure that Google can crawl the pages successfully.  If for example you post your latest news story daily onto your web page news.html, it will not be picked up.  In Google’s words, “the page can’t be     recycled.”

C: Three Digit Unique Identifier

Each URL of your story requires a unique reference number of at least 3 digits (Other than the date).  For example a good structure might be:

Google has a set of other technical requirements and annoying problems that you may encounter. You need to be aware of them in case your site setup needs altering. I will run through the issues in turn.

A:    Dynamic News Content:

Google News indexes dynamic content, asp and php. Be careful with this sort of content as it’s not unknown for the crawler to just ignore them.  If it becomes apparent that the page isn’t being spidered either limit the parameters on the page or create a static version.  If you create a static pager version remember to, robots.txt the dynamic versions.

B:    Javascript

Google doesn’t accept articles embedded in JavaScript.

C:    Links

Stay away from Flash, image or JavaScript links. Google won’t follow them; stick with good old HTML.

D:    Forum style URLS

Don’t use forum style URL’s as above as Google will simply ignore them.

board/ or /boards/
/forum/ or /forums/
/messageboard
/showthread
?threadid= or &threaded

E:     Framed Pages

As with most SEO related activities frames are bad. Google will however review the page to see if its OK.  I would advise you remove any frames before submission to save yourself time.

F:    Multiple Languages

Only use one language per page.  They say per article but I think if you have an English version at the top and a Spanish one below you will encounter the same negative response.

G:    Keep your news section permanent.

Obvious one this.  Don’t keep moving your news section.  Some people move their content around to different areas of the site.  Once it’s up don’t change it.  If  you are accepted and the URL 404’s they won’t bother contacting you they will just     drop the feed.

H:    If you run a subscription model website

If your site runs a subscription service you obviously have to let the crawler in for free. Get your servers to skip your registration forms when spidered, ie: when the User-Agent is “Googlebot.”   The manual reviews aren’t keen on subscription either so I would look at a free feed option if you still want approval.

I:    Rejected URLS

If your URL’s contain the following they will not be accepted:

URL Can’t begin with: https or javascript.
URL Can’t end with: .gif, .hqx, .jpeg, .jpg or .zip

J:    News Sitemaps

This is another feature like the “directory of contributors” that they are trying to get people to use.  If you have the time or the inclination it could be worth building.  In their own words, “We encourage using the Sitemap protocol to create a News sitemap.” I won’t bore you with all the details as I don’t feel this is a deal breaking feature, however if you require more information visit News Sitemaps.

4.  Write A Great News Story

When you have all of the components mentioned above in place and ready to go you are finally prepared for some news content.  I would of course advocate the use of a professional writing team for your news production due to the frequency of posting and the consistency of authoring. If you do decide that you would like to try writing your own stories you should follow my Great News Stories In 6 Steps post which details the journalistic formula to news writing success.

5. Posting Tips – Ensure Your Article Is Posted Correctly

I will write the next section assuming that you have WordPress installed.  If you do not the features mentioned should be available in your CMS.

A:  Create Multiple Authors -

Set up three to five author names in your system.  You then project a multi- contributor face not only to Google but also your readership.  Even if you have a single writer, select a different author name each time you post.

B:  Date Stamping

Engineer the times of your posts.  This can be very useful if you are out of the office or if you wish to back post or even pre-post.  If you enter a time in the future WordPress will wait for that time to arrive and will then automatically post the article for you.

C:  Tagging your article

Tag your article with appropriate keywords to your story; add at least three.

6. Post Your Articles Daily Without Fail

Your news must go up daily (Monday to Friday is fine.)  This is vital as Google doesn’t want sites with sporadic news; they need to know that your news is posted daily.  I would recommend two articles a day.  Once you get into the feed you may want to think about increasing the frequency so that your traffic is spread throughout the day.

7:  Build Up A Back Catalogue – At Least 2 Months!

You need to have a back catalogue of news before you submit your site for the feed.  Your site will be assessed for its suitability.  They will look at your old stories and their posting frequency, etc. Time stamping can help you with this one if you are in a hurry.  If you are starting from scratch and are just doing one or two articles at a time you should wait at least two months before submitting your site.

8:  Submit Your Site To Google News

I will walk you through the final submission process, step-by-step.

A.  Ensure you meet all of Google’s Guidelines.

If you have missed something you will get rejected and have to put it right, so best do it correctly now.

B:  Submit URL

You can Submit Your Site Here.  Select the “Suggest My news site to Google news.”

C:  Input Your Site URL

Fill in your top level domain only.  In this case Purecontent.com. This is not for your news URL.

D:  Directory Of Contributors

In the form they will ask for a Directory of Contributors URL.  This is not an essential step but if you have time to create one it may be to your advantage.  Just create a web page with a list of the author names and some details about your contributors. I personally believe that they do not even read this, but if there is a page on your site it just ticks another box for them.

E:  Complete the form

You are asked a series of ordinary questions, name and address, etc. The only area of this form that needs close attention is the CONTENT INFORMATION SECTION.??This box is where you enter your news feed URL’s.  So however you have set up your news section the correct URL must go in here.  You may have it on a standard page of your site, for example: purecontent.com/news.htm, or perhaps you have set up a sub-domain specifically for your news: news.purecontent.com.

9.  Reply To Googles Email

You will receive the following email almost straight away:

Thank you for your interest in Google News. Please read this message
thoroughly for important instructions on how to finalize your request to
be included in Google News. In order to help us deal with the large number
of requests for inclusion, we ask that you review our guidelines below and
reply to this email if your site meets our qualifications.

We typically include sites in Google News that:

- have news content that is original to the site
- don’t solely promote their own activities
- are written and maintained by a clear organization, one that has
multiple writers and editors

Please let us know if your site fits these guidelines. If it does, you may
want to review our technical requirements as well found at
http://www.Google.com/support/news_pub/bin/topic.py?topic=11665. After we
hear from you, we’ll be happy to review your site for inclusion in Google
News.

While we strive to include as many sources as possible, please be aware
that we can’t guarantee the inclusion of your articles in Google News. We
appreciate your support as we work to improve Google News.

Regards,
The Google Team

IMPORTANT – YOU MUST REPLY TO THIS EMAIL!
Say that you feel your site fits the requirements and you would like to be considered

10.  Sit Back And Wait Your Submission is Complete!

Congratulations you are now submitted to Google news. They will now assess your site and get back to you via email.  This process can take up to a month.  Good luck, and if at first you don’t succeed, try again!  If you have any questions send me a mail and I will help further if I can.

Apendix 1: Common Issues and how to fix them.

If getting accepted is becoming a problem you will need to do some trouble shooting.  Good places to start your investigations  are mentioned below:

A: Dates

If they are spidering and you are displaying a date older than 2 days they probably won’t accept the content.  This shouldn’t be a problem with WordPress as it’s put straight into your page code.  If you are putting your stories into HTML yourself make the dates more prominent in their own line of code. Remove any other dates that may confuse the crawler.

B: Titles

The Google system looks at the pages source code and reads the title from the <title> tags.  If you don’t have one it will make it up; that’s not good. Make sure it’s prominent in the code above the body copy and that it doesn’t contain any links.

C: Article Content

I realise that this one might sound very basic but the crawler is pretty sensitive so the content must fit the guidelines.

Please ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the article too long or too short to be a news article?
2. Does it contain well constructed and properly punctuated sentences??Is your formatting right?
3. Single sentences will stop the crawl.?  Does your article constitute the main body of the page or is it just a small section?
4. Do you have a robots.txt and is it stopping the crawler?

If you are still having issues after this troubleshooting section contact google directly and they will help fix any issues that may not be covered here.

Appendix 2:  Handy Plugins For WordPress.

If you decide to use WordPress install some plug-ins that will help you optimise your content.  Some that are available are shown below and are recommended.

Head META Description – This plug-in will automatically write you a meta description tag for your post. It will change dynamically depending on the query type.

Google Sitemaps – If you don’t have a compliant sitemap (in the eyes of Google webmaster tools) this plug-in will auto-generate the XML page necessary.

Sociable – This will auto insert all the social icons you could ever wish for, from Digg to Twitter.

Akismet - This is a spam filter.  It checks any comments against their web service to ascertain validity.  It will also check any track-backs for spam.

No Ping Wait – Fast posting by moving any old pings to an execute-pings.php. The link will take you to a blog that I have found that still has the install file.  The old source has now been removed.

Written By: David Hobart
Purecontent.com
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Step 1: The Headline – Make sure its news related.
Step 2: The Lead – The lead relays the facts.
Step 3: The Why - Expand upon the lead.
Step 4: The Who – Who is it about?
Step 5: In-Depth & Background. (The Nut Graph)
Step 6: The Round Off Or Kicker – Your Conclusion.

Step 1: The Headline (Make sure its news related)

The standard way to write a headline is to be factual and to inform the reader of the core content of the article in just a few words.  A factual headline is also of  course more searchable than a clever headline.  Have a look at some newspaper headlines as journalists are the experts in this field.  You will soon see how they form their headlines for maximum impact.

The clever headline also has its place. An eye catching headline can work in several ways online.  It will draw readers in who are curious and could generate a lot more links than the traditional method.

If your page is relying on search for its page views I would recommend a factual headline. If however you know that your page will be getting traffic and you are competing against other articles a clever headline may just give you the edge that you need.  A good option is sometimes a factual headline with a clever subheading; this draws your reader in whilst maintaining a searchable headline.

On a technical note only headlines between 2 and 22 words get spidered properly.

Step 2: The Lead – The Lead Relays The Facts

The most important section of any news story is the lead. The lead relays the facts of the article in the first few lines.  The standard rule is to cover the five W’s.

“Who, Where, What, When, Why”

Step 3: The Why – Expand Upon The Lead

The second paragraph of your story will expand upon the lead. You should explain the significance of what you are writing about and “why” it is newsworthy.

Step 4: The Who – Who Is It About?

Depending on the story, the WHY and the WHO could technically switch places. For example if you are writing about Brad Pitt, the who may have more importance than the why.  However if the who is not that important the third paragraph is ideal for this information.  If it’s at all possible give some more in-depth information about the person or organisation in question.  For example: “Actor Tommy Jones is currently appearing in Dick Whittington at the Palladium but is also now writing his autobiography.  Jones is best known for appearing in movies about the Internet such as Geeks United.”

Step 5: In-Depth & Background. (The Nut Graph)

Once you have completed the “Who, Where, What, When and Why,” it’s time to go into the detail and the main body of the story. Include all your in-depth background information at this point.  These sections can contain historical, or     biographical information that will add useful content.

Step 6: The Round Off Or Kicker – Your Conclusion

The kicker is the journalistic term for the last paragraph in a news article.  It closes off your article in a neat fashion.  Like the lead your kicker should have some symbolic resonance with the rest of the article.  The proven components of a kicker are:

Major Quotes – a memorable quote will reinforce the story’s main theme.
Questions – can create a new line of thought for the reader.
An Ending – births, beginnings, deaths, etc.

If you follow the above tips you will soon have an effective news story ready to post.  I hope these tips bring you success, I will be posting shortly about getting a story into Google news. So please feel free to check back soon.

Written By: David Hobart
Purecontent.com
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The North Bay Nugget, a Canadian regional newspaper, recently published three “golden rules” on how to be a successful freelance writer. Most veteran freelancers and content writers probably agree that it is not especially difficult to launch an online writing career, but it is far more challenging to actually stay and prosper in this business over an extended period of time. This is certainly not due to a lack of projects. In fact, the rise of major content providers and the growing importance of blogs and original content-driven websites means that there are more projects available than ever before. But maintaining a successful freelance writing career is not just about tracking down those freelance projects, but being disciplined enough to keep writing, even if a freelancer’s only immediate boss is him or herself.

The first golden rule in the content writing business is to read extensively. Content writers must have excellent research and writing skills. The best way to develop one’s ability to explain news events and complex ideas in a succinct manner is to see how the most experienced journalists writing for the largest papers manage to do this. Sampling different writing styles—including formal, journalistic, punditry and even informal—is especially useful.

The most experienced freelancers also suggest that those in the content writing business write for pleasure, and not just for work. If one associates writing exclusively with formal work-related duties, it will make it difficult to stay motivated. Finally, the old adage that “practice makes perfect” is still a wise tip. Nobody is born with excellent writing skills, but everyone has the chance to develop their ability through practice.

Thank you to the North Bay Nugget for the initial report.

Do you have problems writing effective headlines & blog post titles?

When writing copy for the web it is vital to use headlines and titles effectively to grab the attention of the reader.  This initial hook, or lure, must be compelling enough to make the reader want to carry on reading the remainder of the article.

How do you do this?

I have a few pointers that I hope will be helpful to you. Firstly an analogy.

Cast your mind back to when you were young and carefree.  You see a very attractive girl (or guy) at a dance that you would like to date. Your initial approach is vitally important and can spell the difference between success and a disastrous brush off.  What are you actually attempting to do in those first few but vital words? That’s right; to get her attention and to sell her something – in this case yourself.  Okay, it also helps if you are a handsome football player or the best looking girl in town; selling is always easier if you have a great product.

•    “Hello my name is James.  I have been watching you for some time and I wondered if perhaps you would like to dance with me?”
•    “Hi I’m Jim. Dance?”

Of the two statements above, which do you think would be the most successful?  I hope that you think the second one. It is short and punchy and gets the message across quickly and in few words.

Writing headlines works on exactly the same principle.

•    DRUG CRAZED VICAR SHOOTS WIFE’S COLOURED LOVER

What a great newspaper headline.  It has everything; drugs, religion, murder, infidelity, sex and race.

But what would an editor think?  Probably that it is too long.  Wouldn’t it have more impact and be more attention grabbing if it was shorter?  How about?

•    VICAR SHOOTS MAN

This has more punch and grabs the attention in just three words.  The message that a man has been shot is instantly conveyed and the reader is surprised that a vicar shot him.  The reader is well and truly hooked and he now wants to know more. He is likely to read the article to its end.

Good rules to work by:
•    Consider what the article is to contain and what the main points are.
•    From those main points compose an attention-grabbing headline.
•    Write the headline before you start on the body text of the article.
•    Keep it short and punchy.

Study newspapers (news items and ads) to see how the best in the business create their headlines.  Acquire their skills and you will soon be creating great headlines for your own work.

Marketing companies will often rebrand a product or service to give the impression to the customer that their company in fact made the item for sale or provides the offered service itself, when this is not in fact the case.  This arrangement between the producing companies and marketing companies is now quite commonplace.

The name ‘white label’ was derived from the label that appears on parcel packets which allows the seller of the contents to insert their company name and address.

This form of marketing is often seen with mass produced products such as TV’s, DVD players, etc.  This is why you will see the same television that was manufactured by say, Samsung, being sold under brand names used by large retailers such as Comet or Currys.  The name that is used for the products by those retailers will be exclusive to them.

Internet sites will often use white labelling to offer a service that they do not wish to finance directly.  A good example of this is the use by supermarket brands such as Tesco and Sainsbury that offer services through their websites (financial services, etc) under their own name whilst relying on a third party to actually provide that service.

Retailers such as these also buy in products from food production companies that bear the label of the retailer rather than the manufacturer.  These production companies may sell exactly the same product to several retailers, which is just re-labelled with the purchaser’s brand name.

What is a landing page?

For the newbies amongst us I think the landing page warrants an explanation.  The landing page is the webpage that your user lands on from a navigation route on the web be it a PPC ad, banner or affiliate link.  This page is not necessarily your home page and 9 times out of 10 shouldn’t be your home page but a page that is relevant to the original user’s search term.

Most people sadly do just point their ads to their homepage, your home page may be brilliantly written and look great but it will murder your chances of conversion.  Below are the top 10 tips to make that visitor a customer just by pointing them in the right direction.

As a marketeer any page of your site is technically a landing page and attention and time should be spent optimizing these for conversion as much as possible, but this post is geared towards a landing page built specifically for paid traffic, such as adwords or email marketing.  These landing pages will almost be like a mini site giving a user added benefits, further information and a clear route to subscription or purchase.

Your customer has done you the honour of visiting your website through an advert of some nature, you now have a captive person ready to buy.  It is now your duty as a webmaster to sell to him or her.  They want to be sold to so why so many people make it so difficult for them I have no idea.  Read the tips and hopefully you will be able to increase your conversion in one hit!!

Top 10 Landing Page Tips

1. Relevancy

Ensure that your user lands in a place that is relevant to the advert headline they have come from.  You need to form a familiarity with them as soon as they arrive.  Your page title ideally will be the same as the one in the advert they have come from.  Your visitor instantly knows they are in the right place and are encouraged to read on.

TIP 1 IS A VITAL ONE IF YOU IGNORE THE OTHER 9 PLEASE JUST FOLLOW THIS ONE

2.Tell them what to do, A call to action.

A call to action is your opportunity to push your customer in a certain direction. Tell them what you want them to do. Some people use graphic buttons others use headlines.  Test this out.  Change things around and see what improves conversion and what people don’t like.

3. Page Layout & Size

Before writing your body copy consider size and the space you have available.  You don’t want people having to scroll below the fold if possible.  The ideal landing page puts everything they need to see on the one screen.

4. Message – Be concise and not too clever!

Be concise and not too clever?  We have all been there, trying to think of the coolest, witty, sometimes unfathomable and indecipherable marketing campaign or tag line for our product or company.

If you’re selling bikes, put a picture of the bike you’re selling on the page, not a weird take on selling bikes like a picture of a puncture repair kit with a tag line like “we don’t let you down”.  This sounds straightforward but you would be amazed how many people think they stand out from the crowd by being different.  Stand out from the crowd by giving your customer what they want.

5. Write in the correct person – The second one!

I have read varying opinions on this one and I am in the “You & Your” camp.  The customer is only interested in how you can help them. They don’t want to read “I started selling bikes when I was a lad” they want “You can save 15% by purchasing your bike from us”

6.Keep to the point – Make them follow your route

It is very easy to lose your way when writing sales copy.  Think of writing a sales piece as a journey (I know that sounds corny as hell).  The headline is the start and the sale is the destination.  It is very easy to go off on tangents such as “we also sell this and that” – this diverts your route to sale and should be avoided as it will cost conversion.

7.Formatting – Yes there is a recognised structure!

Most people read the beginnings and end of things to assess whether,
A: They are in the right place
B: Whether they want to use their time reading your page.

Your top and bottom messages must be perfect.  Experiment with them but always have your important info in these positions.  Paragraphs should be kept short and sweet with no more than 7 lines in any one paragraph.

8. First Paragraph – Short and Sweet.

The first paragraph should be short and to the point – no more than 2 lines.
Get your message across quickly.

9.Your Message

List or bullet points are a great to convery your message.  They make skim readers pause on the page and read each line of your message.

.  Bullets work exceptionally well.
.  They slow the reader.
.  The mind ensures you read each line in case you miss something.
. Make the last line a call to action.

10. Make them go where you want them to

You only want them to follow the journey that you have pre-planned for them.  Remove all the unnecessary gubbins from your page.  Navigation that goes to places they don’t need to visit, extra ads etc…  You are spending this time and effort to produce an outcome that you have pre-planned so be careful what choices you give the user.

10a: Test it – there is a science.  Sorry – couldn’t fit them into 10!

Test your page within an inch of its life. The copy is just one small part of a massive puzzle.  Different colour ways, shorter forms, brighter buttons, imagery, adding of video all have a massive impact on the effectiveness of your page.  Get your tracking in place and then notate all your changes.  It is easier to change one thing at a time and see what effect that has rather than wholesale changes and knowing what has really made the difference. You can use testing techniques to get really good stats from the smallest of changes. Check out Multivariate Testing. This allows the use of software to get the info you need.

Good luck guys, let me know if you see an increase in conversion.

When writing copy for the web it is vital to use headlines and titles effectively to grab the attention of the reader.  This initial hook, or lure, must be compelling enough to make the reader want to carry on reading the remainder of the article.

How do you do this?

I have a few pointers that I hope will be helpful to you.

Firstly an analogy.

Cast your mind back to when you were young and carefree.  You see a very attractive girl (or guy) at a dance that you would like to date. Your initial approach is vitally important and can spell the difference between success and a disastrous brush off.  What are you actually attempting to do in those first few but vital words? That’s right; to get her attention and to sell her something – in this case yourself.  Okay, it also helps if you are a handsome football player or the best looking girl in town; selling is always easier if you have a great product.

“Hello my name is James. I have been watching you for some time and I wondered if perhaps you would like to dance with me?”

“Hi I’m Jim. Dance?”

Of the two statements above, which do you think would be the most successful?  I hope that you think the second one. It is short and punchy and gets the message across quickly and in few words.

Writing headlines works on exactly the same principle.

DRUG CRAZED VICAR SHOOTS WIFE’S COLOURED LOVER

What a great newspaper headline.  It has everything; drugs, religion, murder, infidelity, sex and race.

But what would an editor think?  Probably that it is too long.  Wouldn’t it have more impact and be more attention grabbing if it was shorter?  How about?

VICAR SHOOTS MAN

This has more punch and grabs the attention in just three words.  The message that a man has been shot is instantly conveyed and the reader is surprised that a vicar shot him.  The reader is well and truly hooked and he now wants to know more. He is likely to read the article to its end.

Good rules to work by:

1. Consider what the article is to contain and what the main points are.
2. From those main points compose an attention-grabbing headline.
3. Write the headline before you start on the body text of the article.
4. Keep it short and punchy.

Study newspapers (news items and ads) to see how the best in the business create their headlines.  Acquire their skills and you will soon be creating great headlines for your own work.

What is précis?

To précis a piece of writing means to summarise the content.  In other words to reduce the word count of the original piece whilst effectively retaining the main points of the content, preserving the meaning and the feel of the original piece.  When I was at school in the 1960′s this formed a major part of the GCE (General Certificate of Education) English Language syllabus.  In the final examination the précis section accounted for about 20% of the final marks.  Sadly, this skill does not seem to be taught in UK schools these days.  Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to whether or not this is the case in the US?

Is the art of précis important?

Very much so: this is an important tool in your language armoury.  If you are in a job where you are dealing with written reports and documents or indeed writing copy for whatever purpose, you will regret not having honed this skill.

What skills do I need to précis well?

1. You must be able to fully comprehend what is being said in the original document.
2. A good précis must be easy to read. You should write in a clear and brisk style.
3. You must be able to sort the wheat from the chaff in the original piece.  Pick out the pertinent and most important points and dispense with any padding.  Look for the key words that make the most important points in a piece and include them in the précis.
4. You should develop the skill that will enable you to condense and dismember sentences effectively; a good vocabulary is essential to enable you to do this.
5. A very sound knowledge of the mechanics of written English.  Good grammar, sound sentence construction and correct punctuation must always be your goal.
6. As always, read and re-read your précis to spot and correct any errors.

A simple illustration.

Item 1 above could be re-written as below.

1. Full comprehension of the documents content is essential.

This reduces the sentence from the original 16 words to nine, but retains the sense and meaning.

Good précis is an art and you must practice to become fast and efficient.  Find a short article in a newspaper or magazine and attempt to reduce it to the lowest number of words possible whilst preserving the meaning and flow.