Style Guidelines
Follow our five top tips to ensure that your article will be read by as many people as possible:
1. Headline and teaser
Often this will be your only chance to attract the attention of your audience, and you have limited time to do so this, so make it count. The teaser is a line or two that should be your hook into the story. Remember that you don't want to give the reader so much information that they don't need to click through and read the whole thing.
2. Introduction
The attention span of most readers is very short, so you need to make sure that once they've clicked through to your story, they stay there. You could try posing a question, making a controversial statement, creating a sense of urgency, offering something for nothing or including a call to action.
3. Language
Write in a simple, easy to read language style. Informal beats formal every time. Remember to check spelling and punctuation. You need to engage with your audience, so t helps to be humourous, opinionated, ironic or witty, but don't go overboard.
4. Structure
A natural flow through the article is critical to ensuring that the reader gets to the end and absorbs the message you are trying to convey.
5. Notes
Finally, and this is particularly relevant to press releases, you should include a notes section at the end, where you reference the company name, website, contact details and any background information that might be useful to journalists.