 So, welcome everybody to this session on blogging tips, how to be a great blogger. My name is Theresa Cochran, I'm in the communications team at IED in the UK and in my job as in the communications team, one of my roles is to edit the blogs that come to me from our researchers. So, I have, yes I've got lots of experience of having edited hundreds of blogs and what I want to share with you over the next 30 minutes is some of the tips that I give to our researchers when they're writing. So, it sounds from what I've heard that some of you have blogged or are thinking about blogging. What I'm going to share today are basically going to run through some top tips on getting your blog read and ways for it to have the most impact. So, we're going to look at some questions that you need to ask yourself before you even start writing your blog. We're going to have a look at the structure, some top tips of how to structure your blog. Again, it's really useful if you can think about what the blog will look like before you start writing and then some tips on sort of writing itself. So, looking at sort of the language and the tone and that kind of thing. So, I'm going to kind of make the assumption that you all are relatively familiar with blogs. I'm just trying to forward my slides here, might just take a second. So, a blog is an online article written either for personal use or to fulfil business needs. So, that is a kind of, I mean, there's very, very, there's, blogs are very wide and varied. There's lots of different types of blogs out there, but that's just a sort of basic definition. But what I would like to know from you all very quickly in the chat box is why you would blog in the first place. Any ideas from anybody about why you might blog? Please be bold. We've got, we're under not much time here. So, any quick ideas on why you might blog? Change the world. Change the world. That's pretty ambitious, yeah? If you get your blogs to be so excellent, they can certainly have really big impact. Any other ideas? I usually blog only when someone forces me to. It's because someone's making me do it. Okay, so you are, this is like they're an output for delivery. That is often the case and that can happen in IID as well. But that's a nice one to share success stories or lessons learned. That's a really nice one. Yeah, so blogs are really short snappy reads. They're really popular. And they are a quick, easy way of sharing information. That's why I would say that you might want to blog in the first place. They're really short, easy and popular. There's also lots of flexibility with blogs. You can do anything you like with them. You can write about research. You can write about a project, an event that you've been to. You might have tips that you want to share. You might want to start a discussion. Lots and lots and lots and lots of flexibility. So that might be a reason as to why you blog. But one point I make, and this might sound really obvious, but I'm going to make it anyway, is because you've got something interesting to say. And yeah, I come across lots of blogs. And you've got to remember that we are in a kind of situation, a kind of an information overload, almost, when we've got not only lots of information out there, but lots of blogs, lots of people are writing blogs, lots of people are reading blogs. So that means that you are sort of competing with lots of stuff out there. So ask yourself, really honestly, before you start writing, have I got something interesting to say here? Is this really interesting? And if it's not, what can I do to make it more interesting? So almost sort of being really honest with yourself about whether people are actually going to want to read this. But actually, one point I make is that even though you might have something interesting to say, that in itself is not enough to make sure that your blog is going to get read. You have to be more strategic than that. You know, they are short, snappy reads, they're popular. But yeah, just because you think you've got something interesting to say, it's not enough. You need to ask yourself some questions and any ideas from anybody on what those questions might be in the chat box or on the microphone? What questions might you need to ask yourself before you start writing? Any ideas? Okay, I'm going to kick you off with the first question that I ask. Who is the audience? Charlotte, that's an excellent one. That's actually second on the list. Who is the audience? Any idea? Well, I'll kick you off with the first one. The first one is the what. Like what is it that you want to share? Is it research findings? Is it tips on the back of a field event that you've been to? Is it a story that you want to share? Are you looking to start a conversation? So what very specifically is it that you want to share? And what I ask researchers for before they start writing blogs is to sort of say to me in one single sentence, what is it that your blog is going to be about? So my blog is about, say for example, my blog is about sharing research findings on the importance of climate information for CBA. You should be able to tell me what your blog is about in one single sentence. So get really, really focused. The second point is the who. Indeed, Charlotte, who's the audience? So you're not just thinking about what you want to say, but you're thinking about who you want to say it to. So who is that out there? What do they need to know? What do they want to know? You're not sort of thinking about necessarily everything that you know about this topic, but you're thinking about your audience and what it is that they need to know. And another question sort of attached to this is what do you want them to do? So are you looking within any type of communication? It almost falls within sort of two major categories. So there's sort of the push and the pull. You might be familiar with that. So whether you're sort of pushing out information or you're drawing your audience in. So both of them are completely viable. So but what are you trying to do with your blog? Are you trying to just sharing information or are you trying to, do you want them to get in contact with you? Are you looking for feedback? Are you looking for them to collaborate? So thinking, who is the audience and what do you want them to do after they finish reading your blog? Any ideas on the third key question that you might ask yourself before writing? Anyone? Where or how? Yep, why? These are all, yep, they're all good. So on the where is your blog particularly relevant to a particular region? Why I think that's good that I imagine is potentially covered by the what? Like what are you writing? So what, why is this important? Platform, we're going to talk about distribution towards the end. That's good. But one question I would ask is when? Like why are you writing this now? Why is it important? Is there a particular reason? Is there is there a policy dialogue that's happening at the moment? And that's what's prompted you to write this? Is there an event happening? Is there a particular sort of moment in time? So, so the reader knows upfront, you know, this is all very well, but why are you telling me this now? So and if there isn't a particular kind of peg for your blog, try to sort of think of one, look on the horizon and see what's happening out there, what social media discussions are happening that you could use to make your blog more relevant because so say for example, if somebody who is not connected with CBA, for example, is writing about their research findings, if they can link what they're saying to this big international online event that's happening, those discussions are already on already sort of underway. So you can kind of piggyback on what other people are talking about. So thinking about the when is also a really, a really good thing, a really good question to ask yourself. So if you can answer what, you can answer who and you can answer when you have got, I would say the really, a really good grounds for for writing a really good blog, really good strategic blog with impact. If you can't ask any of those answer any of those questions, I would tell you to go away and do some more thinking about it. So to get really focused is all clear so far. I'm going to crack on. What are the key ingredients of a blog? In the chat please. What is it about blogs that make them different from other types of communication? These are all sort of useful things for you to be bearing in mind when you're writing. Key ingredients for a blog. What are the key characteristics? Photos, simplified terms. Yeah, excellent. We'll talk about why it's really important to have photos to bring your blog to life. Simplified terms, absolutely. I'm going to tell you why it's important to keep blogs short in lots of different ways. In fact, we'll kick off with that. So the first thing about blogs is that they are obviously, they are online and that they are supposed to be sort of short, easy to read pieces. They're sort of written to be read on the go. So key is keeping it short. And so by short, I mean short in length. Any ideas about how short a blog should be, no number of words, anybody? So I would say a good blog in length is about 600 to 800 words. We're thinking short in terms of short language, short words. So you're keeping the language really simple and general and easy to read. You're thinking about short sentences. So if you imagine when you're reading text online, even two sentences can very quickly turn into a paragraph. So it's really important to keep your sentences short and your paragraphs as well. So really, when it comes to blogs, less is more. People are not coming online to read blogs, to read sort of long analytical discussions. And we know that when we're reading online, we read it in a very different way than we would do with print, sort of in newspapers, newspapers or other printed matter. You read it differently. You're scanning information. You're looking to extract information quickly. So people will not want to run through 2,000 words of text. They're looking for short answers and they're looking to extract information. Easy to read. This is also really important. It's important that you have a clear argument and that it flows. So again, you know, making sure that you are doing, you're doing all sort of the work with the blog writing. You shouldn't be making it difficult for your reader to sort of think, what are they trying to say here? You know, it should be very easy. There should be a very sort of clear structure that's easy to follow and that your points are easy, are sort of well made. I think Charlotte, you have said it is usually, you are writing it. It's usually by your, you as a person rather than an organisational thing. Absolutely. Blogs are an opportunity for you to get your personal voice across. That's why people are reading your blogs. So it's an opportunity for you to make your voice heard. So it's not just the research, for example, that you're writing about or, you know, the event that you've been to that you're sort of reporting back from. It's what you thought, what you think about that research, why that event was relevant to you. That's interesting. So really, really use this opportunity to sort of get your voice across. Our next point is that is on the tone. Blogs are very informal, they're conversational. So I would sort of say when you are writing your blog, write as much as you can, write as you would talk. You know, there's a short, there are ways of sort of starting conversations. So keeping it in the first person. And I've also put that another key characteristic is links. You will see that blogs are often not packed full of links, but they're often sort of a gateway to other information. So that's a characteristic that you'll often see. But I said to use caution. Anybody, anybody, any ideas on why you shouldn't overstuff your blog with links? Anyone? If you have lots and lots of links in your blog, what do you think might happen? Distracting. Distract the reader. Exactly. I mean, what you want to do is enhance your blog with more information. But what you don't want to do is send people off in another direction. So if you're sending, if you keep sort of putting your reader into lots of different places, the danger is that they will leave your blog and go somewhere else. So you're looking to sort of include information to enhance what you're saying, but not sort of overdo it. Thank you very much. Okay. So we've got the checklist so far. We have established that we've got something interesting to say. We have a certain that we know what we want to say and who we want to say it to. We've checked that it's timely and relevant. So we've asked ourselves about the when. You've got your key characteristics in mind. So you're remembering that it's online. You need to keep it short. You need to keep it personal. You need to keep the tone conversational. What next? So I'm just going to give you a quick run through of the advice I give on structuring. I've got just 10 minutes. Gosh. Okay. Thanks a bit. And I've got just 10 minutes left. I've got so much I want to still share with you. Okay. Quickly through planning your structure. So obviously blogs are very different in nature. But this is quite helpful if you are just sort of if you're if you're struggling to get going basically, you've got a bit of writer's block. But if you sort of think about a blog being 600 to 800 words, this is how it's basically set out. So a headline of about seven words don't want it to be too much too much longer than that because if you think about how a web page appears, you don't want to you wanted to go over one line. You don't want to have a headline that's running over two or three lines. It's just too long. Your introduction of about 50 to 150 words. The middle is about 400 to 500. And the end where you round things up about 50, 50 words. And when you look at it like that, that can just be really helpful in making in, you know, just breaking it down like that can help. And a great photo. And I have, I think it was Charlotte who mentioned the importance of having a great photo. So it is a bit of a cliche to talk about, you know, a picture speaking 1000 words, but actually with blogs, it is really the case. So while you're writing or before you start writing a blog, think about what photo might go with it to help bring it to life. So you're thinking about something really colorful, something with lots of impact. You want a photo to show action. It might very well show people. So you've got the sort of, you know, the sort of human angle in there. And I'm not going to have time to go through all of these different sections. But I do want to, but I will sort of just tell you, you know, go through briefly what you're trying to achieve with the headline with the introduction and the middle. Because as I say, it's really helpful if you can think about the different sections of a blog and what you're trying to achieve. Right. But before we do that, I'm going to do a, I'm going to focus on the headline because I think a headline is the arguably the most important thing for a blog. And I think this is useful as well, because this basically applies to any type of communication. It applies to a blog. It applies to a policy briefing, to a report, even to a presentation. Having a good headline is really, really important. And the way that we look at it is like, you know, bearing in mind that there's so much information out there. It is essentially your headline is almost like a call to action. It's asking people to invest their time in reading your blog and recognizing that we're very time poor. There's loads of information out there. You have to make that really, really strong. And every sentence counts obviously in your blog. You're competing with so many people out there. You want people to read onto the next sentence and the first sentence, the headline is the most important, important sentence of all. And there's loads of sorts of stats to back this up. So one of those is eight out of 10 people will read your headline. Two out of 10 people will go on to read the rest. So it really, really is absolutely critical to get a really good headline for your blog. So what makes a good headline? Anybody, any quick, quick words from the group on what makes a good headline? Any single words to describe what makes a good headline? Any ideas? Are we thinking sort of long, boring? Are we thinking clever, catchy? Okay. I'm not getting any suggestions from the floor, but what you're looking for really, bring brief, catchy words, yep, absolutely, catchy. You're trying to draw in your audience with your headline. So brief and catchy, that's good. Thanks, Rizai. I mean, I would sort of say that with any blog, yeah, you're trying to sort of bring in your audience. Bamboo's by Bamboo. This was a blog that one of our researchers wrote about the risks of the bamboo business to their forestry, the bamboo sort of industry to their forestry businesses. Will COVID-19 leave fuel-rich African countries gasping for breath? So these are kind of powerful, catchy headlines. And here we're sort of playing on the words of using sort of fuel and breath. Feeling the love, that was a headline of a blog we wrote recently about our a server that we did of IID publications. Basically, everybody said that they loved what we were writing. So that was the title there. Creating waves of small scale fisheries. So you can play around with imagery a little bit. A new kind of brew, a small holder coffee and carbon. So, sorry. Yeah, what we sort of talk about is trying to get a balance between clear and clever with your headline. So it's no good having a really kind of cryptic headline. That sounds really clever. But actually, it doesn't really give any indication of what the blog is about. At the same time, you don't want it really informative in a way, but then it becomes boring. So you're trying to find a kind of a balance between something that's going to attract people's attention, but it's also going to give them a clear idea on what the blog is about. So that's my advice. The research is like thinking about a balance between clear and clever. But I have got some top tips for you on for your headline, in case you're striddling. I've got sort of three tried and tested formulas of headlines that work. So first off, we've got the question headline, I call it. I'm just realizing that I can't see the chat anymore, Sabrina. So if anybody has any, how can I see that? It's just gone off. Check back on the top. You say it was coming off from there. Oh yeah. Feel free to unmute Mike's anybody because I'm just struggling to see the chat at the moment. Okay. So the question headline. So with a question headline, can a new kind of consumerism help climate change? What's stopping women working? What is climate change adaptation? So with a question headline, what you're doing is you're constricting a question that you know your audience wants an answer to. You're sort of saying to them, you know, I know you want the answer to this and I am going to tell you the answer if you read my blog. So it's a really good way of engaging people. And we as human beings, we like being asked questions. You know, it's our immediate response. If we're asked a question is to respond, even if it's just sort of in our heads. So by sort of setting a question out in the headline, you're already engaging people by already asking a question. So the question headline is a really good one. The next one is the explanation or how to headline. So how to finance a new climate economy? Why drug prices are rising? Why legal timber matters? So the explanation headline is similar to the question headline. And but instead of asking a question, you're sort of presenting an explanation. So you're telling people how they're going to tackle an issue that they're interested in. The numbers headline, this is also a really nice tip. So let me just so three reasons why pressures on land rights are changing. Five lessons on community based adaptation, seven principles for making farming more sustainable. So we like order. We like organization in our brains. We're very big, we know we're often fans of lists. And with the numbers headline, what you're doing is you're telling your you're telling your reader, I know that you want to know about this issue. And I've already done the thinking about I've already done the thinking behind it. I've already put it into a really easy order for you. So if you read my blog, I'm going to tell you about this topic in very sort of simple logical terms. So that is appealing to people. They know that they're going to read a kind of really ordered list. So there are my kind of tips on if you're struggling for a headline, they are good. There's some sort of tried and tested formulas that work. I'm going to just move on to the other different parts of the blog. So we mentioned that once you've got your headline, then it's your introduction. So these are sort of two or three sentences, 50 to 100 words. When you're really sort of trying, having won your reader over by pulling together a really catchy headline, you're trying to keep the reader's attention. And you need to say, in the introduction, what your blog is going to be about, why is it worth reading this? So you're basically keeping the attention here. It needs to be short. But the idea is if you can keep your reader engaged at the beginning, they're more likely to continue reading until the end. So the introduction is when you're getting your big idea upfront. The middle, so 400 to 500 words. This is where you're really getting into the kind of meat of your argument, or you're getting into the description of what you want to tell people about. You're backing up what you're saying with illustrations and examples. You're thinking here about the what, the why, and the when. So bringing back those questions, like that's what you should be getting across here in the middle. And the end is where you close the circle. You might relate what you're saying in the end paragraph to the introduction. So if it was one of those, it was a blog where you are trying to sort of bring people in, you might end the blog with a question or a call to action, a request for collaboration. So that's what you might cover. So that is my, we're on 12 o'clock now. I'm sorry I have raced through that. I don't know who is, whether you're blogging, a couple of you said that you haven't blogged, but you're thinking about it. I can sort of share any ideas with you, give you some coaching, if that's what you think you might be needing, answer any more questions. But I did just want to end on one point about what you need to do when you have finished writing your blog. After you've put all this effort in to writing your headline, to thinking about the introduction, to thinking about the middle, the ending, the photo that goes with it. My final word, which I always give to researchers, is that your work is not finished now and that you need to share your blog. So quick thoughts. If we don't mind just running over a couple more minutes, ways to share your blog from the floor please, any ideas, how you'd be sharing your blog once you've written it. Social media. Yep, social media, Twitter, Facebook, exactly. Also LinkedIn, if you have professional sort of network on LinkedIn. Yep, LinkedIn is an increasingly important way of sharing research blogs, absolutely. Any other ideas? Old-fashioned email is quite good. There's nothing nice than getting a kind of email from you, the author to a researcher saying, I've written this blog on this topic that I know you're interested in. I'd love to know what you think about it. That's always a good option. You could think about cross-posting as a way of getting your blog out there. So we at IID, we sometimes cross-post other people's blogs. It's possible for you to feature other people's websites as well as your own if you have one as a guest blogger. So yeah, social media, email, all the different platforms, newsletters, make connections with your own networks, see if they've got other ways that they might share. I'm just sort of making that point because that can be a sort of reaction that once you've finally got this thing done and signed off and finished, you're like, oh, I'm finished, but you're not. You've got to go out there and share your blog. Any particular points that anybody wants to raise? I know we're running it over slightly and I know people are very busy. I'm wondering what the best thing I can do. I'm just going to share my email here quickly in the chat box if you have any particular questions that you want to send to me. The session will be available over, the recording will be available and we can also make the slides available as well. Is there any burning questions that anybody has for me? Anything that wasn't clear? Anything that I can sort of quickly go over or are people reasonably happy? I know it's been a very short session. Resai? Yes, I think it was great. Thank you. I think we know it too. So will you be sharing the slides with us or we would have to go somewhere and get it? No, no, I can share the slides. I can share the slides. If you've got, you've got, you can see my email down there. So if you email me, I can reply and share them with you then. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, great. Carl, that's fine. Absolutely. Follow up if you've got any questions. Okay, Sabrina, we're five minutes over. I'm conscious that other Zoom platforms need to be used. We okay to sign off? I've shared my email. If anybody else has got any questions, they can join. Yeah, if you feel that that's fine. Yeah, you can sign off. All right, that sounds good. Thanks everybody for joining. As I say, get in touch if you've got any other questions, if you want to, if you want to share the slides, no problem. All right, thank you very much, everyone. Have a lovely day.