5 Tips to Transition from Academic Writing to Blogging
Engage with your readers and write a better blog
I’ve spent most of my 20s in school. Writing book reports, reflection essays, and published scientific articles became a standard routine.
When I gave blogging a shot, I didn’t know where to start. There’s a different purpose for blogs that makes them engaging and fun to read.
The beauty of a blog is that the format is fluid. You don’t need to have at least 4 sentences per paragraph. You don’t need to have a thesis statement. You don’t need to have an in-depth supportive analysis of what you wrote. In fact, all of these might make your blog worse and difficult to read.
So as I enter my fourth and final year of medical school, here are my tips for becoming a better blogger.
1. Be Relatable
Don’t be shy about telling your story. Your unique experience is what people want to read about. Use “I” statements and write about some of the emotions, difficulties, or successes you had.
In school, I was always taught expository writing. Expository means to explain or describe, usually in as few wasted words as possible. While doing this is terrific for academic work, most people don’t want to be lectured through a blog.
As I began my blogging journey, I thought no one would want to read my story. I’m just one in, literally, billions of people, and my story is not unique. But it is. The delivery of what you write is always going to be unique. It is going to hit a chord with various groups of people.
2. Longer is Better, Right?
Keep your paragraphs and sentences short. Imagine your reader’s eyes scanning the content. What do you want to catch their eye?
Use formatting styles to your advantage. If you really want a reader to read a point you’ve made in a paragraph, try bolding a keyword to draw attention.
Perhaps, there’s an outcome from your story that you really want your audience to engage with.
Using quotes is a brilliant way to draw readers’ attention to essential take-home points in your blog.
Blogs aren’t merely prose. You have the flexibility to use media. Trying to be creative with images is difficult, especially when pulling from copyright-free sources. Sometimes it’s useful to find images that provide a simile to your content. For instance, I wrote an article about the brain, so I used a picture of a cracked walnut. Some might find that funny and want to read your article.
3. Be Straightforward and Understandable
This has been the most challenging aspect of blogging for me. Spending decades in school builds your arsenal of jargon. It’s far easier to use a single specialized word than trying to explain what that word means.
In my field of medicine, we’re particularly horrible at throwing jargon around. I’m sure many have had the experience of going to the doctor’s and not understanding half the words being said to you.
Use a thesaurus to your advantage. If you read a sentence aloud and think, “hmm, I don’t use that word daily,” chances are that most people don’t use it either. Always try to find the easiest way to state what you’re writing about.
4. Address Your Audience and Give Them Spoilers
If you’re following my first tip, then addressing your audience will become second nature. One of the ways to do this is through “you” statements.
Write about your experience, then through a “you” statement, ask a question, or suggest an activity for your reader. You don’t need to force it after every sentence. The goal here is to make the blog conversational even though no one is responding as you write.
Most people don’t read blogs thoroughly. Readers scan the writing for the points they want and then leave. If those points are buried in texts or hidden at the end of the blog, then most of your blog will not be read at all.
In this blog, I made it clear that I’ll be presenting 5 tips to help transition from academic writing to blogging. The first sentence of each tip gives away the learning point I want the reader to achieve. Whether someone decides the read, the additional paragraph depends on my relatability to my audience.
5. Edit by Reading Aloud
Reading your text aloud does wonders to make your writing fluid. If you read a sentence and it sounds choppy, then a reader’s eyes will also struggle to make their way through.
Reading your blog aloud also helps catch unwanted alliteration (when you have the same letter or sound in words near each other). While alliteration can be used creatively, if it’s unintentional, it can make your blog sound clunky.
If you’re just getting started, then use Grammarly. Whether it’s the free version or you want to spring for the premium, the software is brilliant at making you a better writer.
I hope these suggestions help you transition from academic writing to blogging. Any type of writing takes practice. Don’t be discouraged if your first, tenth, or fiftieth blog doesn’t come out the way you wanted. The fun part of writing is that it’s a life long journey. You’ll always evolve and find new ways to write your blogs.
