Today's is the third day of our story-telling crash course on Steemit. We continue to talk about anchoring techniques. The first one was about personal stories and the second one about using citation or quotes. This one is about research.
4 years ago, in an article about a sudden surge of Bitcoin, Matt Ridley, from rationaloptimist.com, writes:
Yet it would be a mistake to write off Bitcoins as just another bubble. People are clearly keen on new forms of money safe from the confiscation and inflation that looks increasingly inevitable as governments try to escape their debts. Bitcoins pose a fundamental question: will some form of private money replace the kind minted and printed by governments?
To put this research in context, the sudden surge mentioned was from $90 to $260, and it's related to the Cyprus bank crisis in 2013. As of now, Bitcoin is trading for more than $1000.
...and now you can start your real article. In my case I would have written a comparison between Bitcoin and Steem.
Credibility and Context
Numbers are hard to beat. If you can back your opinions with numbers (which I highly recommend, if you want to stand a chance in non-fiction writing) then you should do it as often as you can. Anchoring your content with research is adding weight and consistency to your writing, because we, humans, have a lot of trust in numbers.
Using research is especially useful in articles where you touch some scientific topic, being it education, finance, even self-improvement, but I wouldn't use if your goal is to entertain, to make fun of something or to play the emotional side. Numbers are credible but they are also quite cold. Of course, you can always use it in satire or irony, but it doesn't play as well as quotes.
All the other benefits mentioned in the previous two anchoring techniques (personal stories an quotes) are holding here as well.
Let's see a few guidelines for using research as an anchoring technique
- always, always, always give the source of your research. Always.
- isolate the relevant parts, don't bring in the whole paper or the entire battery of results. Pay attention to not skew the results in favors of your own thesis, this will always come out.
- add visuals (I didn't do it in my session, but I encourage you to do it in your assignments), charts are working great.
- obviously, choose a study representative for your topic, don't bring in a study about deforestation if you're talking about computer skills.
- as with the other two techniques, don't abuse it. If you publish the results of some research at the beginning of every article on your blog, you will lose a significant part of the audience, the one interested in narratives and, obviously, story telling.
Assignment: Find and use a relevant research backing up your next article. Also, use a visual. Don't forget to leave me a comment here, as I may overlook the article if you're just tagging it with challenge30 and story. You have 24 hours.
Looking forward to read your stories!
This is a 15 sessions story telling crash-course I'm doing on Steemit, the goal being to improve the writing skills of all members of this community. You can see the list of the sessions here. Each session contains an assignment for which you have 24 hours. I will read and review all the assignments, and award a symbolic prize of 1SBD to the "winner".
Let's tell some stories and have some fun!
image source - Pixabay
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses