By Danielle Bainbridge, PhD, Assistant Professor, Northwestern University
Many academics share a commitment to bring our work and expertise to a wider audience outside of our own classrooms. This could be through video web series, podcasts, op eds, online articles, building our own websites, and so much more. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make when they first begin exploring writing research for a general audience, is that they falsely assume that General audience means less rigorous material. But nothing could be further from the truth. Even though there’s a lot that goes into making digital media, I’ve tried to identify 8 key steps or takeaways that I’ll discuss during this webinar. The first step is to identify your areas of expertise. What are you an expert in and how are you able to talk about these areas of focus? The next step is to name or articulate your key question. What small area of your expertise would you like to share with other people or the general audience? And why is it essential that a general non-expert audience know this information? Third is to link your key question to something that is already happening in the public sphere. How does the question that you formulated in Step 2 Link to current trending topics? How does it differ from what’s already been said? How does it contribute to ongoing conversations?
Next you formulate a hook or a pitch. This essentially combines your research expertise question with the key question you’ve identified is already part of the public discourse. Or more simply put, you put together Step 2 and 3 to create your hook. Step 5 is to identify your medium. Does the information in this piece work best as a video? A podcast? An op ed? A series of tweets? A short Tik Tok? A website? What medium best supports the successful dissemination of this new information? Step 6 is perhaps both the hardest and easiest step, which is to create the piece. This is where all that forward planning comes in handy. Step 7 is publicity or promoting your piece. During this step you figure out a way to publicize this information to your networks and key stakeholders. So tweet about it. Post it to your personal accounts. Share it with your departmental listservs. See if some of the accounts you follow with large followings of their own will share the information or link to the article or piece. Some of this is old-fashioned networking and some of this is building strategies for self-promotion. And the final step is reflection. What could be improved for the next time you decide to make a digital media piece? And what have you learned through this process? When I first began doing digital media a lot of it was trial and error. I learned from what people responded to and made adjustments along the way. These are my personal insights and steps to creating digital media rather than hard rules. Take what you will from each key step and adjust it to suit your own needs.
STEP 1: Identifying Your Key Areas of Expertise
This may seem somewhat obvious, but it is not always the easiest first step to take. It requires you to be both broad and specific at the same time. In order to identify your areas of expertise you should look to things like your listed research interests on your CV or website. But you should also think about some general bodies of knowledge that are common to your field of study which you can speak about with relative confidence, even though they may not be related directly to your ongoing research projects.
STEP 2: Identifying your key question
Next up is identifying your key question. It’s crucial that you clearly articulate what your questions and objectives are at the onset of a project. The clearer you can be about this aspect of the work, the easier it will be to create your piece later on.
STEP 3: Linking your key question to something that is already happening in the public sphere
Step 3 is to identify key cultural conversations that relate to your proposed research question or topic. You should ask yourself: what are people talking about, thinking alongside, or debating right now that makes this the ideal moment to bring up this topic? And how can I contribute to the ongoing cultural conversations with my work and research? An easy way to answer this question is to look for comparable sources or pieces on a similar topic
STEP 4: Formulating a Hook
This can sometimes be the trickiest part of creating new digital media or any kind of public facing work. This is because we essentially have to combine all the work we’ve done in steps 2 and 3 to create a hook that engages a general audience. You have to ask yourself: what about my initial research question is interesting to a general audience? And what current conversation am I contributing to by creating a new digital work? I know that hook can seem kind of gimmicky, but it’s an essential part of creating a successful digital piece.
STEP 5: Identifying your Medium
Before you get started making your piece you first have to decide what that piece wants to be. Is the information you’re trying to disseminate better suited to a podcast or a video? Perhaps it would be better and easier to interpret as a website? Or maybe social media is the best place for your budding idea? Maybe a short Tik Tok or series of tweets will help get the message across much better. What you’re aiming for is a format that engages your audience, highlights the information you’d like to share, and is sustainable for you long term (if it’s a series or longer term project).
STEP 6: Creating the Piece
This step can be both the most simple and also the most challenging phase of project development. Before you get going with this you should first ask yourself a couple of key questions:
- What technical skills do you need to accomplish your task/piece?
- How long will it take you to complete this project? By the time you’re done, will it still find a successful audience online?
- What vision do you have for the overall piece/outcome?
- What potential technical and other support can you rely on from the creative partners or media outlets you’ll be working with?
STEP 7: Publicity
So you’ve done all the hard work of formulating a thesis, defining a hook, and creating a digital masterpiece. But all that work means nothing if no one gets to see it or interact with it. so you have to think creatively and strategically in order to get the word out there about your new piece or project. Here are some basic social media tips that I use when promoting my own work:
- Post to all of your social media accounts and departmental listservs
- See if accounts that you follow with large followings would be willing to reshare or post about your work
- Think of clear, simple, and effective messaging for your posts that tell what the piece is about and how it contributes to ongoing conversations.
STEP 8: Reflection and Revision
So much of the way I learned to make digital media was on my own through trial and error. Because the digital landscape is evolving everyday reflection allows crucial time for you to think back over a project and its creation, and to consider what you would do differently in the future. Ask yourself questions like: what went well? Was my question or hook effectively communicated to a general audience? What can be improved to enhance clarity and reliability in the future? And what about my format or medium can be tweaked in order to make a better product in the future? If you add a period of reflection into every production process you’ll be able to build better projects every time.