David Politis

Notwithstanding Malcolm Atherton’s comment in our recent training meeting about the rule to keep headlines in news releases short in length, the truth is that sometimes reality trumps the rules. Here’s a case in point.

One of our clients at Politis Communications, HandHeld Entertainment, notified us the other day that it was going to be adding a new “outside” member to its board of directors. Obviously, adding a board member is significant news, so we began drafting up a release.

Later that day we had the first draft completed and within 48 hours the release was ready to go out the door with (as it turns out) an eight-word headline.

Then at the last-minute, the top client contact (CEO Jeff Oscodar) pointed out that the addition of this new board member would put the company back in compliance with NASDAQ regulations regarding the number of outside directors. This one observation led to a quick re-write of the headline, a modification of the lead sentence and the addition of a new sentence to the finished release.

So . . . although the rule of thumb is keep news release headlines shorter (eight words being the ideal length), there are exceptions to every rule, this one included.

Depending upon what needs to be accomplished, a longer headline may actually be required.

This was just one of the “loud and clear” messages that struck home in a recent training meeting with Business Wire’s Malcolm Atherton at the Politis Communications offices.

To be specific, news releases with headlines that are eight words long was deemed the ideal length.

Such length best for several reasons, Atherton explained.

1. Shorter headlines improve results in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.
2. Shorter headlines have greater impact with readers as there is less to read.
3. Shorter headlines don’t get truncated in returned search results. (Both Google and Yahoo! only include the first 50 or so characters of a headline in the returned summary result; everything else is cut-off in the summary.)
4. Shorter headlines force writers to truly understand the thrust of a release, boiling the content down to the absolute essence — the core of what is needed — no more, no less.

Simple lesson then: When in doubt, shorter headlines are best for news releases.