News is everything that someone somewhere wants to bury; everything else is marketing. Put it very briefly in front of them so that they’ll read it, obviously so that they’ll remember it and enjoy it, aesthetically so that they can remember it next time and, most importantly, accurately so that they can be guided by it. It’s like a painter’s impression of a painting; it doesn’t say much, but it tells a lot about it. The same applies to any marketing literature.

The media plays an important part in our culture. Without the media we wouldn’t know how outrageous some statements are or how flat the world seems to be. We wouldn’t have the means of easily getting information across or the way that people communicate with each other. Without the press the flow of societal communication wouldn’t be as strong as it is. So where does that leave you as a marketer?

You need to give people something to read when they’re on a newsfeed. News headlines are a great place to start; they’re usually short, snappy and immediately accessible. You can then use the information that you’ve extracted from the article to encourage people to visit your website – or your email list, if you’re using one. In a nutshell, you want your headlines to encourage people to read your article.

A great headline is rarely more than two words long. If it’s a good read, you can work the name of your product into it – “A Good Product for Customers”. However, be careful with this approach; many readers won’t be able to distinguish between a brand name and a product name and will just read the product name. It’s important that your headlines are unique. If you use “A” for brand names and “a” for articles and content you’ll make your headline’s much easier to read.

You also need to give people a reason to read the news in the first place. It may sound simple – after all, it’s just another form of advertising! But news isn’t like television advertising, where a company spends millions on commercials – headlines have to have real value for readers to take them seriously. You have to get your audience interested in your story before you can actually get them to read it. Here’s how you do that:

Try reading some headlines in the morning, just before you wake up. After that, try reading headlines during your lunchtime. You can then compare how often you’re responding to the headlines with how often you read other news (which isn’t as easy, since we tend to respond to what we see rather than what we hear). The results should show you a way to make headlines interesting and engaging for your readers. It’s that simple – and it works!