Notes from the Editor: January 2017
Notes from the Editor: January 2017
Welcome to our first BahaiTeachings.org editor’s newsletter, and thank you, once again, to each and every one of you for your wonderful, selfless contributions to teaching the Faith! BahaiTeachings.org would not exist without you!
Many of you have asked for general tips on what kinds, types and styles of essays work best at BT, so I plan to dedicate this monthly column, over the next few issues, to some of the things we’ve learned during the first four years of our existence.
First, publishing on the web has one substantial advantage over publishing anywhere else—it generates feedback, and allows us to use actual reader responses to improve what we offer to our audience. In that process, we can modify and adapt in an evolutionary way, and refine our content so it better reaches our readers and touches their hearts and souls.
Lesson #1: the Importance and Power of Titles and Ledes
We’ve gradually recognized, since we’ve been doing this kind of global electronic teaching for a while now, that our titles and ledes have an enormous impact on the size and enthusiasm of our audience. Since many of our readers, and the primary source of our new seekers, comes from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, BT readers typically see three things in their social media feeds: a title, a graphic or photograph, and a lede, which is newspaper-speak for the opening sentence of an article. (“Lede” is spelled that way so early newspaper publishers wouldn’t confuse it with the word “lead,” which normally referred to the movable, lead-based type in early printing presses.)
Of course, potential readers instantly evaluate those three elements to decide whether to click on and read an essay. A catchy title, a compelling graphic and a good lede generally mean that an article will do well, generating substantial traffic and resulting in effective teaching.
But mastering those forms of discourse is an art. A catchy, “sticky” title on the web (sometimes referred to as “click-bait”) often looks something like this: “Five Great Tips for Buying Your First Car;” or “You Won’t Believe What Happened to Brangelina!” Titles like these promise fast, easy information, and generally don’t deliver.
As a site devoted to the Baha’i teachings, we try to avoid the false promises inherent in clickbait-like titles, although we have learned that compelling titles do make the difference between a well-read article and an ignored one. The best-performing titles at BT usually focus on more general subject matter, avoid Baha’i-specific terms or jargon, and immediately pique the curiosity of the reader. For example: one of our consistently most popular articles is titled “Déjà vu: Do Dreams Predict the Future?” Those kinds of titles draw readers in and bring significant traffic to BT.
Now, on to what we’ve learned about ledes. In the past, we sometimes began many of our articles with quotes from the Writings or other authoritative sources. But we now know that those quotes, unless they’re very short and simple, get severely truncated on social media, and make people much less likely to read BT material. Why? Because ledes on Twitter and Facebook typically stop at 140 characters—basically a line and a half of type—and then cut off any further verbiage. Using a long quote from the Writings as a lede, then, tends to only puzzle and confuse potential readers.
So we’ve recently decided to modify each one of our ledes so it can be expressed in a social media-friendly format of 140 characters or less. Newspapers do the same thing now, and it’s becoming standard practice across many platforms. It’s not always the most satisfying or profound way to begin articles, we understand—but it is the most efficient way if we want readers, which of course we do. Short, compelling ledes, we’ve learned, maximize our readership and appeal to the widest possible audience.
