Every Online Journalist Need To Know This

Every media company and journalist have their own style of writing. But these are a basic set of rules in which particularly online journalist or content writers need to consider in order for them to attract viewers, readers, audience from the internet. Which are : 

Knowing your audience

If you can find your niche audience, cater to their curiosities, and give them some helpful answers. Why do you have to pick a single niche?

Well, there’s no Internet police that will come break down your door if you don’t stick to your niche.

But the thing is your readers aren’t guaranteed to be interested in all the topics you personally love. For example, if you love gaming, gaming industry is massive. Thus, you need to specify a type of gaming that you will interested in talking about the most, let say first-person shooter game. If you stick to one topic, you can guarantee to talk more in depth about it and when people who are interested in one of your posts have a high chance of being interested in all of your other content, as well.

Interesting/Catchy/Informative headlines

The attention span of people on the internet very low, as we have a tsunami of information that can distract the readers. Hence, online journalist need to have either interesting/catchy/informative headline.

Informative headline, ex: "Teenage found dead in his toilet Saturday afternoon", let the readers know the gist of the content in which will help them to decide if they would like to read further. In addition, if can get fast and reliable information from your website, it is more likely they will come back to read more.

While, Interesting and catchy headline, ex: "5 reasons why you cannot shower", will get clicks as it curious the readers when they see these kind of headlines.

 

Inverted Pyramid

Everything that you want to share with the world are important. However, 5W1H will always have to be at the top because people attention spans are very low. Readers are time-poor, and often in task-mode, so don’t leave them wondering. Here’s proof.

Keeping it short

Infinite space is not the same as infinite time. People nowadays don’t like their time to be wasted, we are in a fast paced world. People want information and go. 

Scannable text

Again it is a fast paced world, people like to just skim through. I’m guilty of it too. Online journalist need to use bulleted or numerical lists, break it up by using subheads, include white space and make use of new media visuals, by having images, diagrams, or multimedia instead of text-heavy paragraphs. 

Layer website with hyperlink

Hyperlink certain words or phrases to other relevant resources. So that people can read more about it. It also help keep people engaged with the content. 

Also, by building these internal links within your own site also helps Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), in which making your content easy to appear in search results on places like Google or Bing.

Whatever your style of writing is you need to consider all of the tips mentioned if you want to be an online journalist, in order your article to gain readers and audiences aka money.