Blogging for public engagement

About the author

Dr Anna Ploszajski is an award-winning materials scientist, author, presenter, comedian and storyteller based in London. She’s a materials generalist, equally fascinated by metals, plastics, ceramics, glasses and substances from the natural world. Her work centres around engaging traditionally underserved audiences with materials science and engineering through storytelling. Having developed her own unique blend of autobiographical scientific storytelling in her first book, Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making, she now trains professional researchers and teachers to communicate what they do better, through the study of story. In her spare time, Anna plays the trumpet in a funk and soul covers band and is an ultra-endurance open water swimmer. Oh, and it’s pronounced “Por- shy-ski”.

Twitter @AnnaPloszajski Link opens in a new window

Instagram @annaploszajski

Website www.annaploszajski.com

Anna is smiling with a microphone in her hand. There is a shooting star shape behind her in lights.

Introduction

Definition: short for weblog, a blog is a regularly updated web page used for sharing long-form articles on a specific subject, known as posts. Posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent at the top. The tone of blogs is often one of personal commentary or updates, and they are tend to have an informal or conversational prose style. Blogging is a written medium, but posts may also contain photos, videos and links, as well as comments sections at the bottom for readers to have their say.

This guide is intended for university students and staff. In it, I’ll be taking you through how to plan, write and produce a blog to inspire, entertain and disseminate your work at the University of Warwick. By the end, you’ll have all the skills, tools and information you need to get started… and keep going!

Part one: planning	Part two: setting it up	Part three: planning a post	Part four: writing	Part five: maintaining
Why start a blog? What will you write? What are my aims? Who’s my audience? Generating your idea Personal blog Institutional blog Professional blog Getting specific	The technical stuff Find your look	Find the angle Decide on your one key message Structuring like a storyteller Beginning Middle End	Decide on your narrative voice Layout Other formats: interviews Other formats: lists Plagiarism and licensing	Knowing your audience Growing your audience Engaging with your audience Accessibility Monetise Measuring your success Keeping going Final words of wisdom Further resources

Part one: planning

1. Why start a blog?

Blogs are a fantastic and accessible way of disseminating your work to all sorts of different audiences, and there are lots of reasons to write one:

To grow your audience; it’s estimated that 77% of internet users read blogs (Social Media Today).
To share an experience or journey.
To widen your reach; blogging is a medium accessible to anybody with an internet connection, which can allow you to access otherwise difficult-to-reach audiences.
To widen your personal and professional networks, and build community.
To drive traffic to your other work; such as websites and social media platforms.
To raise your profile in your industry or field, and give yourself authority.
To gain experience and skills with writing for different audiences.
Because blogs are self-published, they give you freedom to write what you want to write.
It’s completely free of charge, and through advertising can even earn you money (more on that later).
You might have some specific aims for engaging with different audiences, related to your research area.

But, be warned, there are plenty of reasons not to start a blog:

It takes a lot of time and effort; each post can be hours in the research, writing, editing and promoting.
Depending where you host your blog, it can cost you money. Although it is possible to monetise blogs by selling advertising space, the vast majority of blogs are loss-leaders for their writers.
There might be better media out there for you. Does your idea really need to be communicated in a regular series of written posts? Or would it be better-off as a one-off article? A podcast? Might it be improved by video?
Blogging as a format has limited audience engagement; your audience can leave comments beneath your posts, but is this enough of a two-way dialogue for you?

If you’re absolutely certain that blogging is the perfect medium for you, then read on…

2. What will you write? 3. What are my aims?

These might be to promote your work to a certain audience, to stir up debate, to debunk misinformation about your field, to be an information source, to promote the university, to attractive prospective students to apply there, to profile inspirational staff, and/or simply to entertain your readers with something that’s also informative.

Whatever your aims are, be specific. Why exactly are you doing this?

4. Who’s my audience?

There is no such thing as ‘the general public’ when it comes to writing for non-experts. ‘The general public’ refers to the full, disparate, diverse, cross-section of society. Aiming for too wide an audience dilutes your efforts and means you’ll be less likely to create something that will really resonate with your readers.

Instead, define who you want your readers to be - conjure a typical reader in your mind’s eye - and think about how your blog will cater for them. You might want to think about your ideal audience’s:

Age
Ethnicity
Gender
Geographical location
Level of expertise on the blog’s topic
Occupation
Sexual orientation
Socioeconomic status

Whoever your audience is, be specific.

Find in-depth guidance on identifying your audience here.

5. Generating your idea

Once you’ve decided who you want your audience to be, and what your aims are with your blog, it’s time to think of ideas for how to meet those aims for that audience. Blogs are a fairly informal and personal medium, and are usually used in one of the following ways:

To convey life experiences of the author.
To provide regular updates on the progress of a project or business.
As a regular (daily/weekly) update, a bit like a diary or journal.
As a platform to communicate the writer’s opinions or personal takes on a subject.
With a repeated set format, such as recipes or reviews.

I recommend reading as many blogs as you can for inspiration. In the following sections, you can find some great examples of blogs I love written by students and researchers.

6. Personal blog: Dr Charlotte Mykura’s medical school blog 7. Institutional blog: University of London student blog 8. Professional blog: Lawyer Watch by Richard Moorhead 9. Getting Specific

Once you know what type of blog you’re aiming to write, it’s time to get down into specifics.

1. Name and Domain Name

What are you going to call your blog? The name of your blog will also become its URL. So, it needs to be unique, short, catchy, on-brand for you and descriptive of the blog’s content.

Your domain name will be the name of the blog, followed by .org or .co.uk or .com etc.

For example, if your name was Anna Ploszajski and you wanted to start a blog about materials science, you could consider names for your blog such as:

Name	Domain Name
Anna Ploszajski’s Blog	annaploszajskisblog.com
Anna’s Materials	annasmaterials.co.uk
Materials Science with Anna Ploszajski	mat-sci-anna-ski.com
The Materials Blog	thematerialsblog.org
Daily Materials	dailymaterials.com

Come up with a list like this, then google them to make sure they don’t already exist, and choose your favourite.

2. What do you want to write about?

As we saw earlier, blogs are often used in one of the following ways:

To convey life experiences of the author
To provide regular updates on the progress of a project
As a regular (daily/weekly) update, a bit like a diary or journal
As a platform to communicate the writer’s opinions or personal takes on a subject
With a repeated set format, such as recipes or reviews

Have a quick google of your blog idea, and for other similar blogs in your subject area. If you find your idea’s already being done well elsewhere, consider changing your audience and/or scope.

3. What’s the format of each post?

Will you be writing in the first person about your experiences (“I did this…”, “Today we visited…”), or will it be in the third person, writing about other people’s work? (“The researchers asked…”, “David is a famous jelly engineer…”).

Will you be conducting interviews or quoting researchers’ voices in the piece? Do you plan to include images or videos in your posts alongside your writing?

4. How long will each post be?

This can range from 200 to 2000+ words, depending on your aims and audience. How much time do your audience have available to read your work? Are they busy or time-rich? Are they after digestible highlights or deep delving dives?

5. How frequently will you post?

Some blogs are a bit like a newspaper column, in that each new piece is published on the same day every week. Others have a random publishing schedule. What’s important is that you post regularly.

What will your audience prefer? Will they read on weekdays or weekends? On a commute or at the office? Monday’s good for professional, factual content, whereas evenings and weekends can work best for comedy or more light-hearted pieces. Choose a manageable schedule, such as once a week or once a fortnight, and try to stick to it.

6. What’s your log line?

Now that you’ve defined exactly what it is you’re going to be creating, can you describe it in as few words as possible to hook your readers in?

For example:

Anna’s Materials: A weekly roundup of the hottest discoveries in materials science
Anna Ploszajski’s Lab Blog: Updates from research into the world of edible materials
Daily Materials: Small nuggets of material joy from materials scientist Dr Anna Ploszajski

Part two: setting it up

1. The technical stuff

Now that you’ve got your name and idea, you need to set yourself up for publishing on the internet. Unless you’re a web developer whizz and can build your own websites from scratch, you’ll probably want to use a hosting website to publish your blog through. Which one you choose is personal preference, but here are some of the most popular:

WordPress

Wordpress is probably the biggest and most popular web editing site. You can start with a very basic website for free, and you can buy custom domain names through them, and pay small monthly or yearly subscriptions to add more to your site as you go.

Wix

Wix also offers a free basic website and templates, with small monetary subscriptions as your blog builds and you want to own your domain.

Squarespace

Potentially more expensive the other two options, but Squarespace has nice templates and, similarly, you can buy your blog’s domain name through them. It’s a great all-in-one platform in case you want to expand your website later, or integrate online shops or member areas.

You might also want to consider specific blog hosting sites such as Medium, which don’t charge you and might actually make you a small amount of money if you become a popular poster.

Your university or department may also allow you to publish a blog through their website, so it’s worth checking whether this is the case if it would suit your blog’s aims and audience.

2. Find your look

All of the above hosting websites allow you to choose from nice looking templates. As well as your posts, your blog will need a:

Home page: this is where all your posts will be listed, in reverse chronological order (with the most recent first). Some templates will allow you to have little tickets for each post, others will present the post in full.
About the author: this is to give your readers a bit more information about who you are, what you’re interested in, and what makes you qualified to be writing what your readers are reading.
Contact: blogs are a great way to connect with others, so make sure you have a page with an online form through which your readers can get in touch with you.

Part three: planning a post

Although the content of your blog posts will be unique to you and your blog, I’d like to share some basic principles on writing for the public, which I hope you’ll find to be a useful starting point when it comes to planning your first blog posts.

1. Find the Angle

1. What’s in it for me?

Make it all about the individual reader, their life, their personality. How will they be changed after they read your post? For example:

Which element from the periodic table are you actually?
How would you have died if you were married to Henry VIII?

2. Timeliness

Is there something going on in the news cycle this week that you can use as your hook to communicate your research? For example:

Record heatwaves and why they matter.
What Musk’s ‘X’ rebrand says about masculinity in 2023.

3. Political relevance

Is there something going on in the world of politics (local, national or international) that you can use as your hook to communicate your research? For example:

Why Uxbridge’s ULEZ wars matters for the UK’s race to net zero.
What Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s food security means for your supermarket shop.

4. Affects many people

What if your research could affect a huge number of people (positively or negatively), but your readers have never heard of it? That’s a super place to start. For example:

The nutrient you’ve never heard of that could make you live ten years longer.
Here’s everything you need to know about how hydrogen could change your life.

5. Niche audience

Alternatively, you could target your whole blog or an individual post at a very niche audience. The more targeted your writing, the more likely it is that people from that audience will read and share it with each other. For example:

Bedfordshire bird populations over the last thirty years; trends, topics, and what might happen next.
Ten things every driver on the M6 should know.

6. Controversy/Taboo

Controversial or taboo topics are likely to be embroiled in media and social media debate (also, people just like reading about these things). People will be looking for an expert’s take on it. Your blog could serve that purpose. For example:

Britain needs nuclear power; I’d be happy to have it on my doorstep.
Freedom of speech is stifling academic research, not the other way around.

7. You (autobiography) or biography

People care about people and personal experience. So telling autobiographical (about you) or biographical (about someone else) is a great hook for engaging your readers, particularly if your readers aren’t familiar with the world of the work. For example:

My 20-hour shift on the NHS front line.
Marie Curie: Ten things you didn’t know about science’s most famous woman.

There are some common angles which blog writers are often tempted to take, which I’d like to give you a word of warning about…

1. Astonishment

Maybe your story is about something so astonishing - so MIND-BLOWING - for your audience, that you needn’t work hard to sell it to them at all. Maybe your astonishing research will stand on its own.

But, I’m sorry to say, probably not.

This is where, in my opinion, lots of researchers trying to engage with the public fall down. Just because you think your work is the most astonishing result in the history of time, that doesn’t mean to say that anyone else will remotely care. We all still need to work really hard to sell it to our audiences using one of the above approaches.

2. Piggybacking

Piggybacking means taking something that is already well-known, such as a movie, book or TV show, and writing about it from your area of expertise. Such blog posts might be called something like: ‘The [your subject area] of [famous movie/book/TV show]’. For example, The Materials Science of Downton Abbey, or The Theology Behind His Dark Materials. On the one hand, this is a great way to find new audiences by tapping into existing audience bases who love the book/movie/TV show.

But, be warned that fans of those shows may only be reading your work because they love the [famous movie/book/TV show], not necessarily because they’re interested in you, your knowledge or your writing. So use this one with caution.

2. Decide on your one key message

Once you’ve found your angle, done some research, and made a good plan for your blog post, pause and think: if there’s one thing I want my audience to take away from this post, what do I want that to be?

For example:

Marie Curie wasn’t who we thought she was.
Hydrogen isn’t dangerous.
The UK is not on track for Net Zero.

Keep this key message in mind as you write your first draft, and make sure it’s coming through.

3. Structuring like a storyteller

We can turn to the world of storytelling to help us structure a blog post.

You probably learnt at school that stories have three parts; a beginning, a middle and an end. This is a useful structure for us to use when writing for the public. The three parts have important and distinct roles to play in your post, and below I’ve outlined some elements you could think about including in your blog post in each of these three sections.

4. Beginning

Title

Titles need to be eye-catching to hook your readers in. Titles should communicate the content of the blog post by using keywords about the content, as well as being phrased to entice your readers to read on.

Top paragraphs

The top paragraphs are your opportunity to immerse your readers in the setting of your piece. There are three important aspects to consider; the world of the story, the main characters involved, and the key question the story is trying to answer. Let’s take each one of these in turn.

1. World

To build up a vivid scene for your readers, you need to tell them where the story starts, when the story starts, and how the world of the story works.

Is it set a laboratory? A hospital? An industrial estate outside of Norwich? Places are really important to stories, so make sure you spend some time immersing your readers in the world of the story. What are the sounds? The smells? The sights? The textures? Does anything unusual stick out? Is it hot or cold? How does it feel to be there? Drop your readers into the world at the beginning of your story, and keep it vivid for your readers as you go through and tell the story.

Is it set in the present day? The future? The past? Time and how it relates to the current time of writing (and the time of reading) is crucial for good storytelling.

Are there any special rules the readers need to be aware of? Who’s in charge? What are the daily routines? What are the physical limitations of that world?

2. Characters

All good stories need characters. So, who are the characters in the story you’re telling?

You’ll definitely need a main character, which is the person your readers follow throughout the story. In blog posts, the main character is often you, the author. Or, you might be telling someone else’s story, which which case, they’re the protagonist.

Who are the other characters in your story? Who are the heroes and villains? The victims and the perpetrators? Who are the innocent bystanders? The more people you can weave into your tale, the more gripping, believable, memorable and compelling it will be for your audience.

3. The key question/problem

In their most simple form, stories are made out of questions and answers. The question is posed at the beginning of the story - What if a plucky young scientist called Dr Frankenstein one day animated a monster? What if, one day, an eleven year old boy got a knock on the door and was told that he was a wizard? - and the story is about the answer to that question.

So, for each of your posts, what’s the question?

You might think of this in a slightly different way, if it helps: what’s the problem that I or the researchers in my story were trying to solve?

By the end of the beginning part of your blog post, your readers need to have a good understanding of the question that’s going to be answered by the end.

5. Middle

The middle part is the main body of your piece. It’ll be made up of:

Lots of writing
Headings and subheadings to break up the text
Some images to compliment the writing

This is where you explore the answer to the question that you introduced at the beginning. There are a couple of aspects of storytelling you could consider, if it makes sense for your piece, that will make your story gripping for your readers.

Conflict

All good stories need it to be a bit difficult for the question of the story to be answered straight away. It’s not a good story if it was really easy for the characters the whole time and they didn’t have to try very hard to get what they wanted. Good stories involve conflict.

For example, stories about research might involve conflicts such as rival researchers or discrepancies in the literature, feelings of imposter syndrome, unexpected or unusual results, accidents, machines that keep breaking, global pandemics and human error. Where the conflict in your story?

Stakes

Good stories also need something at stake. The character needs something to gain or something to lose.

For example, short periods of time to complete a task or time running out is a great example of a stake. Others might be other people relying on you, having advantages or resources removed, losing faith in the cause, or having high potential rewards. What’s at stake in your story?

6. End

Part four: writing

Having planned out your piece, including some or all of the aspects of good storytelling that I’ve mentioned above, it’s then time to write the thing out. Here are some aspects of writing for the public which I hope you’ll find helpful.

1. Decide on your narrative voice

One fantastic aspect of blogs is that your voice as a writer can really come through, and you’re not stifled by an editor’s meddling. As we’ve discussed already, blogs are often written in an informal, conversational style, but it’s worth playing around what with sort of voice you want your blog to have.

I asked ChatGPT to write an introductory paragraph on the topic of ‘hydrogen and the UK’s Net Zero targets’, using two narrative voices; an academic voice and a blog post voice for non-specialists. Take a look at how different they are:

Academic Audience:

Hydrogen, an elemental marvel, has emerged as a promising contender in the pursuit of the United Kingdom's Net Zero targets. As the nation endeavors to combat climate change and achieve a sustainable energy future, the versatile applications of hydrogen technologies have garnered significant attention among researchers and policymakers. Its potential to serve as a clean and efficient energy carrier, facilitating decarbonization in various sectors, has sparked profound academic interest. This discourse explores the multifaceted nature of hydrogen's contributions to the UK's Net Zero ambitions, delving into its challenges, opportunities, and implications for a low-carbon society.

Blog Post for Non-Specialist Audience:

Hey there, eco-warriors! 🌿 Ever wondered what could help the UK smash those Net Zero goals and save the planet? Well, say hello to hydrogen – the superhero of clean energy! 💨🔥 Yep, it might sound like science stuff, but trust me, it's pretty cool and straightforward. Hydrogen is like this magical element that could power everything from cars to factories without spewing nasty greenhouse gases. 🚀 So, get ready for a ride into the world of hydrogen and how it's gonna make our future so much greener! 🌍💚

You can decide how formal or informal you want the voice of your blog post to be, but whatever voice you use, make sure the vocabulary you’re using is suitable for a non-specialist audience.

If you’re not sure, read your writing aloud to a friend, housemate or family member. Are you using words you’d never normally speak to them? Then consider simplifying your language.

2. Layout

Writing for online publication is a bit different from other forms; you want to keep your paragraphs really short so that your readers don’t feel overwhelmed with large blocks of text on the screen. As a rule of thumb, I’d recommend breaking up the text into paragraphs which are 1-3 sentences long. You can also consider breaking up the blocks of text with numbered lists or bullet points if appropriate.

They say a picture paints a thousand words. This can be particularly true when we’re trying to convey complicated or technical details to a non-expert audience. So, do consider breaking up your text with images that further help you to get your point across. Always make sure you have permission if you want to use other people’s images (see section 5 on plagiarism and licensing below), or use free image services such as Canva.

In order to further break up big blocks of text, you could consider pulling out important quotes from your writing into bubbles or boxes.

3. Other formats: interviews

As well as an opportunity for telling your own story, blogs are a fantastic way to have a reason to talk to someone whose work you admire, and quoting experts is a great way to add texture and credibility to your writing.

There are three ways you can bring your interviewee’s voice into your writing.

1. Transcribed conversation

You may have seen this in print journalism before; the piece is a written transcript of the conversation, often with the interviewer and interviewee’s names or initials written at the beginning of each line to indicate who’s speaking.

For example:

AP: What first drew you to wood as a material?

GP: It’s funny, when I was really small I can remember being obsessed with wood. I’d collect sticks in the garden, run my hands over the knots in my bed frame. I just wanted to touch this stuff, I can’t explain it…

2. Reported speech embedded in prose

This is where you can use speech marks and speech indicators (‘George said’, ‘I asked her’) within your prose.

For example:

But where did it all start? George grinned at the memory. 'When I was really small,’ he told me, ‘I can remember being obsessed with wood. I’d collect sticks in the garden, run my hands over the knots in my bed frame. I just wanted to touch this stuff, I can’t explain it…’

3. Pull quotes

This is where your prose is continuous, and the quote from your interviewee stands alone in a box.

For example:

I’ve always been interested in finding out what draws some people to certain materials over others. What is it about their personality as a person? About the personality of the material itself, that attracts one to the other?

“I just wanted to touch this stuff, I can’t explain it…” - George Page, Furniture Maker

4. Other formats: lists

If storytelling or interviews doesn’t feel like the right fit for your idea, you could always experiment with the simple list. This format was massively popularised by the likes of Buzzfeed, and can work well as a blog post.

A cursory glance at today’s Buzzfeed front page offers the following ideas:

… here are 5 memorable moments…
… and 25 other spot-on reactions to…
… here are 18 stories to prove it…
… here are 5 other times it worked and 4 times it didn’t…
… all 11 ranked…

5. Plagiarism and licensing

Plagiarism is serious business, so all of the content on your blog must be original to you. That means your words, images and video content must all either be made by you, be usable under a creative commons licence, or used in accordance with its licence (for example, some licences allow you to use images if the owner is attributed).

When it comes to images, the best is to take your own photos or draw your own illustrations. Then you own the copyright and nobody can question you.

But, if you do want to use an image you haven’t made yourself, Google has a great search feature where you can search by Creative Commons Licence. Just click Images, then Tools, then Usage Rights, then Creative Commons licences.

A screenshot showing Google image search.

Part five: maintaining

So, you’ve published your first one, five or ten blog posts. What’s next?

1. Knowing your audience

All blog hosting services will allow you to see some basic statistics about who’s reading your stuff. For example, you’ll probably get a graph of daily visits; you’ll hopefully be able to see spikes of activity when you publish new posts. It’ll also show you how people find your blog, through social media, via google or direct.

Maps and statistics of where your readers are in the world can also be really useful for assessing who your audience are.

2. Growing your audience

Once you know who your audience is, you can start targeting blog posts more towards them. To grow your audience further, you can also think about:

Sharing your blog with family and friends across your personal social media and messaging services.
Post content on your blog’s social media feeds, using relevant hashtags.
Promote on web forums and social media groups relevant to your audience.
Start a mailing list.
Cross-promote with other similar blogs; write a guest blog for someone else, and vice versa.
Create extra visual and video content to accompany your piece and share widely across social media.

One really useful thing you can do to drive new traffic is to make sure your SEO - Search Engine Optimisation - is strong. Your web host will allow you to add SEO metadata to your page, such as tailoring the page title and description to include the best keywords that someone searching for the topic would use to find information about it.

3. Engaging with your audience

Keep engaging with your readers by encouraging them to comment below your blog posts, and engage them in conversation on social media.

You can also point them towards other aspects of your work, such as other pieces of writing, or any live talks or events you’re taking part in, where readers can come and meet you face-to-face.

To participate in a Resonate event, sign up here.

4. Accessibility 5. Monetise

As I wrote earlier, most blogs are loss-leaders that bring benefits other than financial ones to their writers. However, if you do want to try making some money out of your blog once it’s popular enough, you can include advertising on your site. Google Adsense is a good place to start for this.

Alternatively, you could partner with affiliates who will pay you a commission every time someone clicks on their advert from your site. For example, you could write reviews about their product or service, and get paid to point traffic to their website.

You could also consider selling your own products or services directly on your blog, or selling digital downloads such as ebooks, video tutorials and e-courses.

If you’re confident you have a strong following, you could create a membership area on your blog, through which readers would pay to access more exclusive content.

6. Measuring your success 7. Keeping going

Most blogs only last a handful of posts because it takes a lot of time and effort to keep them going. So how do you keep your blog going?

Don’t be afraid to mix up the format or completely re-brand the blog into something else. Create fresh visuals, change up the voice or the style, add new writers, even mix up the format.
Write smart; don’t necessarily increase the number of posts, but think about increasing their quality by thinking of your audience and trying to meet their wants and needs.
Outsource the marketing and social media to someone else if it’s too time intensive. If you can’t find a human to do it, use ChatGPT to write your Tweets for you!

8. Final words of wisdom

Most blogs take a long time to build up a substantial readership, and even then, most blog visitors will be one-hit-wonders. Don’t worry about metrics or reader numbers; a small readership of engaged and specific readers is infinitely better than a large disparate audience who don’t engage at all.

It’s okay to stop doing the blog when you’ve met your aims and/or it comes to its natural end. You can leave it on the internet for as long as you’re happy to keep paying the hosting subscription for future readers to find and enjoy.

9. Further resources

Warwick Institute of Engagement

Blogging for public engagement

About the author

Introduction

Contents

Part one: planning

Part two: setting it up

Part three: planning a post

Part four: writing

Part five: maintaining

Part one: planning

Part two: setting it up

Part three: planning a post

Part four: writing

Part five: maintaining