With any article, email or newsletter, after spending time and effort writing it, getting people to actually open it, or read it, is the next big challenge.

Your aim is to capture their attention for long enough to continue reading, or to go to your web site and purchase your product or service. After all, your whole goal is to lead your reader to do something, a 'call to action'.

Therefore your headline or subject line of your article, email, or newsletter is where you will make it, or break it.

Following through with a well written body is equally important, but if there are no tips or answers to the reader's interest within the first few paragraphs, they may well decide to read no further.

The headline or subject line must be short and concise. This is critical. You want to instantly grab their attention with a dramatic statement or question. You need to make your email subject or headline standout from the rest.

Good attention grabbers are phrases or questions such as, ‘7 Ways To …', ‘How To…', ‘What's Wrong With…', ‘Are You Sick and Tired Of..' but I suggest you take this one stage further and add dramatic action words.

For example, which headline is going to get your attention, ‘Why Are Your Email's Unread?' or, ‘Assault Your Reader's Attention and Force Them To Open Your Email'. ‘7 Ways to Reach Your Audience', or ‘ 7 Ways to Force Your Audience To Pay Attention'. How about something like this, "Isn't It Time You Stopped Your Competion From Kicking Your Butt!"

You probably haven't thought about it, but you are exposed daily to new ideas for generating those ‘killer' headlines or subject lines. Next time you walk past a News Stand glance over at the papers, and see what the latest attention grabbing headline is, and then see if you can work it round that email or article you have to write. Carry a small notebook and take a second or two to jot them down. That way you build up a ‘swipe file' of ideas to use later.

Keep in mind that although your article or email no matter how well written, can simply fall by the wayside if you fail to grab your reader's attention right away. Most people have so much information coming at them, you literally only have a few seconds to grab their attention.

Make them count!