Secrets Journalists Don't Want Bloggers to Know
In many ways, blogging is a lot like journalism. In fact, many bloggers refer to themselves as
citizen journalists.
Whether you view yourself as a type of journalist or not, one thing is
certain: if you follow some of the lessons journalists use when they
write articles, your blog posts will be better and your blog audience
will grow. Following are five things bloggers can learn from journalists
to get you started on your journey to write better blog posts and
online content.
1. How to Write a Great Title
Journalists
know how to write article titles that intrigue audiences and encourage
people to start reading those articles. Writing great titles is a craft
that anyone can learn, but it does take time, practice, and
experimentation. Use your
blog analytics tool
to measure post performance, and review the comments submitted to your
posts as well as the social sharing of your posts to get a better
understanding of what types of post titles drive clicks, conversations,
and sharing. Read
5 tips to write great post titles for help.
2. How to Write Using an Inverted Pyramid
Journalists
write using what is referred to as the inverted pyramid where the most
important information is included at the beginning of an article and as
you read through that article, the content becomes less and less
important. The goal is to make sure readers get the most important point
of the story immediately, and then they can choose if they want to keep
reading to get the secondary details. Basically, if they read nothing
more than the first paragraph, they should still be able to walk away
knowing what the primary point of the story is. Tony Rogers, About.com
Guide to Journalism, provides a great introduction to
structuring content using the inverted pyramid, which is a great place to learn all the details.
3. How to Write a Strong Lede
In
journalism, the lede is the lead-in to the story. It's usually the
first few sentences or the first paragraph of an article and it tells
readers the main point of the story. The lede should also intrigue
readers enough to motivate them to keep reading beyond the first
paragraph. It's worth it to spend a few extra minutes making sure you
write a strong lede in every blog post. To learn more, Tony Rogers,
About.com Guide to Journalism, offers some great tips on
how to write a great lede.
4. How to Get Great Quotes
Journalists
know how to interview people and get great quotes that make a boring
article so much more meaningful and interesting. You can learn how to
conduct interviews like a journalist in About.com Guide to Journalism
Tony Rogers' Everything You Need to Know about Interviewing guide. To find people to interview, publish your requests using free tools like
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and
ProfNet from PR Newswire.
5. How to Break Stories
Journalists
are always on the hunt for the next big story. They have address books
filled with contacts, so they can be the first reporter on the scene
when news breaks. Bloggers can break news, too. Use
Google Alerts,
SocialMention alerts,
Twilert, and Twitter apps like
Monitter and
Hashtags.org
to track news related to specific keywords. Follow journalists and key
individuals in your industry or related to your blog topic. Tools like
MuckRack for finding journalists and
WeFollow for finding people by self-identified tags can help you stay on top of real-time conversations and breaking stories.
