When writing for your business, it is critical that you grab people’s attention quickly – there are too many websites, blogs, newsletters, direct mail letters and emails for any of us to read them all just in case they hold something good further down the page.

Having said that, you need to grab their attention in the right way or it can actually be damaging rather than a marketing opportunity.

What is the right way? Well, it varies according to the situation of course, but when preparing an opening to a document/webpage/newsletter consider:

• make it relevant – no point grabbing the attention of people interested in retirement villages if you sell motor bikes
• keep it honest – don’t promise a discount unless one is really on offer
• keep it appropriate – swearing, sexual references, hateful comments and so on are not necessary and are unlikely to win you good customers
• keep it as short and/or visual as possible – a half page paragraph is not going to grab like a 6 word word heading
• aim it at what your customers want to hear, not what you want to say – I recently read an email which started by saying how great their two organisations were – the final paragraph was about a competition they were running. It would have been much more effective to start with the competition to grab my attention.
• be realistic – or so far over the top that is obviously humour. An almost believable claim probably won’t build trust so people will move on
• be sparing with bad (or gimicky) spelling – preferably stick to good spelling altogether and be as grammatically correct as possible
• make it interesting or ask a question – or ask an interesting question!