What researchers can learn from journalists

Have you ever stopped to think about what ordinary people think when they read your content? Are they instigated to learn more about the topic, about your research, and most importantly, do they understand what you've written?

How to make your content more attractive on the web

Unlike researchers who understand the world from systems, theories, and constraints, ordinary people understand the world from personal stories and social relationships.

That's why most of the communications on web pages, news portals, and editorial materials are aimed at ordinary people. It's all about who did what, when, how, where, and why.

So, how can you make your content accessible to more ordinary people? The first step is to understand how they think, and that's simple: they want to know what you've discovered and why it's important.

You need to learn how to write your content in a way that is engaging and attractive to ordinary people. And there's nothing like journalistic writing to teach you that.

Journalistic writing has a very clear purpose: to grab readers' attention. They use formatting techniques, headlines that evoke strong emotions like curiosity, fear, or surprise, and reader-friendly information.

Here, you'll learn how journalistic writing techniques will improve your web content so that it reaches ordinary people and gains more visibility on the web.

Write an attractive heading

What's the first thing that catches your eye when you see a newspaper article or an online article? I'm sure you thought of the title, didn't you?

A title has 8 seconds to grab a person's attention. So you need to know the best ways to make it attractive. And yes, you can do this with longer titles, which apparently are very dear to all academics.

To do this, we'll use a structure found in newspaper headlines:

Pre-title + Headline + Subheading

By dividing the title into these three categories, we can transform a visually tiring title into something attractive and easy to read in a publication or on a website.

If you want to know more about headings for academics, read the article:

Headings for academics: 3 fields of ideas

Take inspiration from the lede

A lede is the first sentence or opening paragraph of a news story that grabs the reader's attention. Think of the lede as an introduction, where we find the main information of the story and the question that the body of the story will address.

The lede answers five questions, known as the five Ws (plus "H") - who, what, where, when, why, and how. Who is this story about, what happened, where did it happen, when did it happen, why did it happen, and how?

I know you won't always get the answer to all these questions. However, adapting this concept to the context of your subject can help to capture the reader's interest quicker, especially on the web.

Use active voice

Of course, academic writing has its own criteria for articles and other publication material. You don't need to change that. However, when bringing your content to the web, consider simplifying the language by using the active voice.

Using sentences with an active voice attracts the audience and makes reading more fluid, keeping the reader interested in what is to come.

Here's a simple example:

• Passive voice: The article was written by Murray.

• Active voice: Murray wrote the article.

Do you notice the difference in the fluidity of the sentence?

Keep it simple

If you're writing for the web, you need simplicity and brevity so that the audience can easily understand the story without having to read it several times.

The longer a sentence is, the harder it is to understand. The aim is to simplify even the most complex concepts and write them in words that everyone can understand. Remember that you are speaking to ordinary people.

Regular people are not used to reading walls of texts like academics are. So, avoid long paragraphs; they can seem too heavy to read. Create paragraphs of 3 to 5 lines so that the reader's eyes scan the page more easily.

Use the inverted pyramid structure

In the age of fighting for attention, the inverted pyramid writing technique can increase the chances of grabbing attention for your story.

It presents the most important details in the first paragraph and then completes the story with more and more specific information as the article progresses.

Placing the information in the article in descending order of importance makes the reader understand the main point of the article from the very first sentences.

This writing style also ensures that the most relevant keywords are in the first sentences of your article, increasing the probability of search engines finding your work.

In summary, here are the tips you should keep in mind:

• Use words that most people will understand;

• Use short sentences and paragraphs (get to the point);

• Eliminate unnecessary words that create redundancy;

• Use sentences with active voice;

• Organize information from most to least important.

These are just some of the techniques that researchers can learn from journalists. We'll soon be bringing you more journalism tips to help you create more engaging content on the web. Part 1 of 3.