What a great assignment I just completed for a technology comms team: I templated their blog posts, intranet announcements, lead generation emails, news releases, speeches, success stories and white papers.

Now all the writers have to do is to fill in the blanks with their fascinating research and delightful prose. No more reinventing the wheel.

Over the years, I’ve templated everything from event invitations to proposals to webpages for my clients.

Save reading — and writing — time.

I love writing templates because they:

• Save communicators time. Story patterns exist, and a savvy writer can deconstruct them. Instead of reinventing them with each piece, spend your time coming up with brilliant facts and figures and polishing your prose.
• Overcome information overload. Once readers are familiar with the template, they don’t have to learn each subsequent, say, webpage’s structure, write Martin J. Eppler and Jeanne Mengis in “Preparing Messages for Information Overload Environments,” an IABC Research Foundation report. That reduces processing time and effort.
• Result in more effective communications. A group of Israeli researchers found that nine out of 10 award-winning ads used templates; only 2.5% of less successful ads had.

To write better, easier and faster, template your press releases, webpages, proposals, case studies — even your personality profiles. The secret is to develop standard structures that are flexible enough to cover a variety of subjects.

Here are 13 templates to consider:

1. Story tables or grids

Are you comparing X number of items by Y number of characteristics? Make your story a table or grid. Here’s why:

The Poynter Institute’s Chip Scanlan and The Sun News’ Josh Awtry offer these grid templates — what Autry calls “nonlinear storytelling” — to consider:

Issues roundups. This grid does two things, Scanlan writes. It lays out the information in a logical format for readers, but, almost more importantly, it frees up the communicator’s time and energy to pursue more complex stories.

Year in review/preview. Top-stories-of-the year roundups “can get long in a hurry,” Autry writes. Instead, how about creating a simple form where communicators fill in the blanks on key issues of the year?

Meeting stories. These are tough. Too often, communicators blah-blah on about who said what in chronological order. “When it’s just a meeting where some things were approved and some action was taken, wouldn’t this information better benefit readers as a grid?” Scanlan asks. I think it would.

Grids are so effective that if a story lends itself to one, I’ll always choose that option.

“Why don’t we, as an industry, embrace different ways of presenting information other than the linear story with a beginning and an end?” Autry wrote. “Why do we take perfectly good information and muddy it up with conjunctions, prepositions, and the like for tradition’s sake?”

2. Lists

Listicles and other list stories make it easy for skimmers to get the gist of the message without doing a deep dive on the topic. No wonder they’re so popular on social media and other platforms.

3. Case studies

For case studies, testimonials — even mini narratives — try this simple structure:

• Problem
• Solution
• Results

4. Web pages

In a recent project, we created templates for some sections of Saint Luke’s Health System’s new website. Department pages, for instance, included:

• Highlights: A bulleted list of our three most compelling differentiators — firsts, mosts, bests, biggests and onlies
• Nut graph: A one-paragraph summary of the department
• The team: Notable players
• Services: A bulleted list
• Learn more: Contacts and links
• Testimonial: A callout from a patient

Your web pages will be different, but you’ll save a lot of time if you’ll develop templates. We’ve templated web pages for Tellabs and PetSmart Charities, as well as Saint Luke’s.

5. Memos

Procter & Gamble uses this one-page memo template:

• Idea
• Background
• How it works
• Key benefits
• Next steps

If a memo at Procter & Gamble exceeds a single page and doesn’t use this format, Eppler and Mingis write, it’s likely to be returned to the writer unread.

6. Project proposals

Procter & Gamble also uses this two-page proposal template:

• Background
• Objective
• Rationale
• Plan
• Open issues and questions to be answered
• Next steps

7. Solutions descriptions

In their IABC Foundation report, Eppler and Mingis themselves demonstrate the power of templates by organizing their solutions pages like this:

• Context: Who’s doing it
• Main idea: Why it works
• Implementation: How to
• Caveat: Issues to avoid

8. Advertising

Most creative ads use one of these six advertising templates, according to a group of Israeli researchers:

• Pictoral analogy: Replace the central image with another one — a croissant for a tennis ball, for instance
• Consequences: Car speakers that are so loud, they make a bridge collapse, say
• Extreme situation: A jeep driving under the snow to demonstrate its all-weather capabilities, maybe
• Competition: A race between a car and a bullet, for instance
• Dimensionality alteration: A woman arguing with her husband about life insurance — in a seance, after he’s died, for example
• Interactive experiment: the Pepsi Challenge, for instance

9. News releases

These elements of the social media release template would make a good template for any release:

• Headline
• Deck
• Introductory paragraph or two
• List of key facts
• List of quotes

10. Personality profiles

The International Association of Business Communicators and Qualcomm and are among the companies that template human interest stories. In fact, all these organizations get profilees to fill in the blanks, so communicators need only edit the profiles.

IABC’s template includes these questions:

• Which word or phrase do you think is overused right now?
• How would you explain your profession to a child?
• What did you have to learn the hard way?
• If you could choose another profession, what would it be?
• What’s the best reward for a job well done?

11. Critical issues memo

Mike Hall, corporate communication manager for Pioneer Hi-Bred Europe, developed this memo template for outlining critical communication issues:

• Situation: What happened?
• Response strategy: How we are dealing with it?
• Media coverage: What are the media writing about it?
• Media strategy: How we will move forward and with whom?
• Standby statement to press: What do we currently release as the corporate view on the issue?

12. SPIN memo

Here’s another way to template a similar message:

• Situation
• Problem
• Implications
• Next steps

13. Narrative structure

Writing an anecdote or story? Eppler and Bischof suggest this structure:

• The (hero’s) context
• A challenge or crisis to overcome
• A failed attempt
• A successful attempt (climax)
• Resolution
• A moral, or lessons learned

Write by number

Words like template, formula and recipe are sometimes seen as profanities in a creative field like writing. But good writing is at least as much science as art. And you can’t argue with results like “easier to read” and “easier to write.”

No doubt about it: T-e-m-p-l-a-t-e is not a four-letter word.

What template could you use for your next piece?

___

Source: Martin J. Eppler and Jeanne Mengis, “Preparing Messages for Information Overload Environments”, IABC Research Foundation, 2009

Chip Scanlan, “Nonlinear Narratives,” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 16, 2003

Josh Awtry, “Grid Tips,” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 15, 2003

Josh Awtry, “‘There just isn’t a story here,’” The Poynter Institute, Oct. 15, 2003

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What’s in a name?

A great headline can mean the difference between a story that gets read — or one that gets passed over.

So what’s the headline formula that will produce compelling headlines that appeal to search engines as well as to your target audience? Whether you’re writing a blog post, news release or social media status update, try these tips for drawing readers in with your headlines:

1. Avoid vague heads.

These are actual headlines that appeared in actual publications:

Prepare for the worst

Help me cope

Keeping it together

These headlines are so vague, they could all apply equally to stories about my husband getting ill, my business going bankrupt or my finding out that the mini-mart is out of Twix bars.

If your headline could apply to any story, you shouldn’t use it for any story. The best headlines are ultra-specific. Write a unique headline for your unique story.

2. Tighten loose heads.

These, too,are actual headlines that appeared in actual publications:

Preparing for the successful sale of your business

(I’m sure there was a more successful way to write this headline.)

What is intellectual property, and why should you care about it?

( I already don’t care about it, because this is such a bad headline.)

Vague heads are less like headlines than story ideas. “I know, let’s do a story on what is intellectual property, and why should you care about it?”

A story idea isn’t a headline. Good headlines take time and effort to write.

3. Reverbify label headlines.

In 1986, The New York TImes ran a column about Canada’s campaign to forge a free-trade deal with the United States. The headline:

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

Michael Kinsley, then the editor of The New Republic, declared it to be the most boring imaginable headline.

Label headlines — like Worthwhile Canadian Initiative — are boring. They identify the topic without saying anything about it. They are nouns or noun phrases without verbs.

Here, for example, are a few of the label heads that have crossed my desk lately:

Bulletins

Chemical update

Field distribution

Graphics systems

Strategy statement

With label headlines, you miss the chance to reach the huge and growing percentage of your audience who just read the display copy. You lose readers who rely on headlines to draw them into the story. And you sap the energy from your pieces, because labels have no verbs.

But a headline isn’t just a topic.

Avoid label headlines.

To fix label headlines, say something about the topic, and make sure your subject has a verb.

instead of:

Charity Collection for Geneva and Africa

Write:

Help African orphans, vulnerable children, Manchester’s poor

Donate to XYZ’s autumn charity collection Oct. 15-31

Verbs are power words. Make sure your headline has one.

4. Stop ing-ing.

Who ever decided that “Present Participling Noun” was a clever headline? You’ve seen (maybe even written!) ing-ing headlines like these:

Introducing the Strategic Growth Incentive

Making dams safer for fish around the world

Ending Child Trafficking through Collaboration, Awareness, and Support

So what’s wrong with “Introducing the Strategic Growth Incentive”?

Ing-ing headlines focus on your organization’s actions instead of the reader’s needs. They suck the subject out of the headline. And they substitute present participles — weak nonverbs — for power words, like verbs.

Stop ing-ing.

When you find these headlines in your own copy, rewrite. Use subject, verb, object. Then you’ll end up with power words like stoke, step, shape and turn.

And that will put the energy back in your headline.

5. Skip the buzzwords.

Chris Smith, senior lead communications specialist at Entergy, writes:

Indeed. And if you’ve crammed “strategic,” “value-added,” “proactive,” “solution” and “core competencies” into your headline, it’s a bad headline.

6. Skip ‘headline words.’

Copy editors — who must often squeeze sense into a headline or subject line with very few characters — have developed a vocabulary of super-short words.

You see these terms in headlines, but rarely anyplace else. They’re words like:

• Accord for agreement
• Eyes for sees
• Flap for controversy
• Ink for signs
• Irk for irritate
• Mull for consider
• Nab for steal
• Nix for cancel
• Pact for contract
• Pan for criticize
• Scribe for writer
• Slate for schedule
• Veep for vice president
• Vie for compete
• Weigh for consider
• Woes for miseries
• Woo for persuade

Don’t use these words in your headlines. Instead, steal the idea behind these “headline words.” Use more familiar one-syllable words to develop sharp heads of your own.

7. Don’t drop key elements.

Is there a deadline for responding to your message? Create a sense of urgency with a call to action in the headline.

Are you writing to a subset of your target audience: asthma sufferers, maybe, or single moms? Consider calling out to them in the headline.

If there’s a key element to the story, consider including it in the headline.

8. Don’t make the reader groan.

John Russial, associate professor at the University of Oregon, begs you to stop writing headlines like:

The pear facts about anjous

Plan for a fence at jail has some neighbors railing

Rail plan is … on track … off the track … at a crossroads … going downhill … going uphill … moving at full throttle … huffing and puffing like the little engine that could

And anything taxing around April 15.

9. Avoid confusing the reader.

Books bulge with confusing headlines. Among my favorites:

NFL to ask its players to donate brains for study

Ouch!

Include your children when baking cookies

Yum!

Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25

Yup! Or even after age 20.

Read more ridiculous headlines.

10. Don’t get it wrong.

Read far enough into the body copy to get the headline right. A catchy headline does nothing if the information it relays is incorrect.

“Make sure the big type does not contradict the little type,”  writes Russial.

Here’s one that does contradict the little type, from Inc. magazine:

Hot Tip: Set Cost-Cutting Targets

Head first.

Want to convince people to click to read, increase conversion rates and social shares, boost content marketing results and otherwise improve the ROI on your message? Write more compelling headlines.

Headlines get twice the attention of body copy. They change the way people think. And they’re the gateway to your message.

Lose readers in the headline, and you’ll likely lose them altogether.

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