Tip sheets are essentially lists of a half dozen or so ‘tips’ that tell people how to do something or how to solve a problem.  They are a great way to get free publicity.  Traditional editors and reporters love them – they’re a ready to go piece that requires little to no extra work, and they cross into different formats (print, TV, radio, etc.) well because they can be used as short lists complete with bullet points.

Best of all, tip sheets are easy to write and can be pulled together relatively quickly.  Everyone has seen a form of a Tip Sheet in traditional media: “8 Ways to Lose Weight Fast”, “Top 10 Biggest PR Blunders of All Time”, “6 Proven Tactics to Lower Your Energy Bills”, the list goes on.

For those of you who spend time on, or are at least familiar with, the various online social networks (as any modern PR person should be) those types of titles should look familiar.  Go to the first page of Digg.com and at least two or three of the top posts will have titles similarly structured.

The ‘tip sheet’ tactic has crossed from traditional PR to new online mediums, except the online marketers and SEO types coined a new term for it: Link Bait.

Hey, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”…

5 Great Tips for Putting Together a Great Tip Sheet/Link Bait Title Article

1. Use numbers in the title and try to work in words like ‘Best’ or ‘Top’ – the whole idea is to make it exciting and easy to digest.
2. Be Concise.  The first sentence should give the instructions, the second sentence should explain them – that’s it.
3. Avoid promoting yourself or your client too much.  The temptation is there, but people will not trust your advice if they feel they’ve been pitched to.
4. Use ‘action language’.  The tips should read like well-written instructions, start off with a verb whenever its possible.
5. Make it short and sweet.  Limit the whole thing to a page; you want there to be enough information to  actually be of use, but people will not read through a huge laundry list: 5 to 12 tips is a good guideline.