How To Create Appealing Online Content for Research

How To Create Appealing Online Content for Research
The enormous and varied international readership now consuming online text means that there are many different types of content that have proven and will no doubt continue to prove appealing to large numbers of readers. However, there are certain qualities shared by the content that tends to be particularly appealing to a broad audience, including the wide range of readers who now consume online scholarship. Content that recalls and reinforces basic principles and procedures, especially when those basics have been forgotten or overlooked, is among the most universally appealing, but so too is content that is surprising or contains unexpected discoveries and twists. A similar paradox is inherent in the universal appeal of not only content that challenges assumptions, but also content that affirms them.

Although the conflicts inherent in this assessment of content may make it sound as though pleasing the people who happen to land on your scholarly web site or blog will prove difficult or virtually impossible, advanced research actually provides the perfect content for achieving these paradoxical qualities. The key is to prioritise and highlight them – perhaps not all of them in a single article, but affirming and challenging or perhaps reminding and surprising can certainly take place in the same document, as the following tips suggest.

• Most academic and scientific research tends to employ at least a few traditional methods and procedures. These may seem dull material – the kind that could be eliminated when reporting research in short textual forms online – but perhaps returning to an older methodology now neglected by many researchers or creating more stringent controls improved the significance or reliability of your findings. If so, make the most of it and you may have your readers thinking ‘I knew it was a mistake to neglect those procedures’ or something of the kind that aligns them with your perspective.
• Advanced research exists, for the most part, to make new discoveries, and sharing exciting new findings is usually the reason for publishing and otherwise disseminating text about that research. This means that the results of your recent research project should already have a healthy helping of natural appeal, but do play up any exciting findings immediately when writing online. If new methods led to the surprising results, mention those as well (see my next bullet point), and do not forget to make the most of any return to older methods if such a strategy played a part in your new discoveries. By so doing, you will have the double appeal of both the old and new, the reminder and the surprise in a single article.
• New methodology can take research in unexpected directions and produce surprises for the researcher and his or her readers. Some of these twists may be unproductive or even hinder the progress of your work, while others might be ground breaking and lead you to discoveries you had not even imagined. Tell your readers about the twists and turns of your research and how they affected the overall process, keeping in mind that arriving at surprising new results that challenge assumptions is also affirming the larger purpose of original research to advance and increase human knowledge.