by Steve Kellas
In the last post, we looked at how to write perfect headlines, and today we’re going to take those copywriting techniques a little further into writing good sub-headings.
You’ve probably heard about how, when we’re online, we don’t read, we scan. Surely you’ve noticed this when suddenly finding yourself confronted with a long page of copy and no breaks – just endless paragraphs of undifferentiated text. It’s hard to read, and if you’re like me, you just hit the ‘back’ button.
Break it up
We use sub-headings to create much needed visual breaks in the copy and give cues to the scanning reader so he or she can quickly get a sense of the structure of our page, and to get a sense of what we’re going to talk about. I call this visually ‘thumbing through’ the copy, as you might do with a magazine.
Create a reader’s outline
Remember back into your schooling? Someone, somewhere told you to always outline your writing before beginning. Well, I’m here to remind you to do that. The reasons are simple:
- an outline naturally structures your ideas before you begin writing (that’s how I put together this post)
- each point of your outline is a potential sub-heading; the more separate topics you have, the more sub-heads
- creating a structure first keeps you on-topic
By using the points of your outline as your sub-headings, you speed up your copywriting. You are also doing the reader a tremendous favour. You are showing him or her the main points of your page.
How to write sub-headings
Here’s how I put together this post:
- Wrote the headline – this gave me focus for the topic
- Outline sections and main points – I really wanted to make three points in this one: 1. break things up, 2. outlining, and 3. how to
- Filled in points to make in each section
- Re-wrote the sub-headings to be more interesting, and relate better to the copy I wrote
It’s important to refer back to the techniques we discussed in the last post. You can use these techniques in your sub-headings as well, depending of course, on what point you’re trying to make.
For instance, in this post, I’ve used a combination of statements of outcome (in this case an outline of my main points), and appealing to your desire to improve (how to write…). If I were going to sell you a widget, at this point, I would include a sub-heading that makes the offer and reveals a benefit to taking my desired action.
We’ll talk about making an offer and asking for action in the next post.
Coming next in the series: home pages Part 3 – Calls to Action
Tags: copywriting, web copywriting
