NEW YORK, Dec. 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The sheer amount of content being produced daily makes it increasingly more difficult to grab -- and hold -- reader attention. Multimedia is a great means of grabbing audience attention -- but it doesn't make up for a bad headline on a blog post or press release, or a bland subject line on an email. Small business marketers need to start their content with an engaging "hook" that jumps out at the reader and spurs them to click through and read the full text…and take the desired action.

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Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends LLC, offers tried-and-true best practices for creating a winning headline in her latest article for PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit. Using the CAST method (Count, Act, Specify, Tease) that she and her colleagues swear by, Campbell guides small businesses through an exercise in crafting concise, active, and specific hooks that tease just enough of the content's value to encourage audience readership and follow-through.

To learn more: http://bit.ly/1dNXDWh

PR Newswire's Small Business PR Toolkit is a comprehensive resource that provides small businesses and entrepreneurs the tools to develop an affordable public relations and marketing plan that helps generate interest from potential customers, engage with key audiences and grow their businesses.   The toolkit features relevant content such as informative white papers, interactive webinars and how-to articles and premium access to educational resources, as well as the opportunity to take advantage of special offers designed specifically for small businesses. To request information on how PR Newswire can help your small business, click here. You can receive updates on new Small Business PR Toolkit content by following @prnsmallbiz on Twitter.

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PR Newswire (www.prnewswire.com) is the premier global provider of multimedia platforms that enable marketers, corporate communicators, sustainability officers, public affairs and investor relations officers to leverage content to engage with all their key audiences. Having pioneered the commercial news distribution industry 59 years ago, PR Newswire today provides end-to-end solutions to produce, optimize and target content -- from rich media to online video to multimedia -- and then distribute content and measure results across traditional, digital, mobile and social channels. Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimization network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and is a UBM plc company.

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Caitlin Carragee
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201.360.6363
caitlin.carragee@prnewswire.com

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