How to Write an Engaging Longread in the Age of Short Texts

To write an interesting longread, you need to shift from copywriting to journalism. Journalists have always been able to create engaging materials over 8,000 characters long that people enjoy reading. But with the advent of social networks and clip thinking, short texts, infographics, and memes have taken the place of longreads.
December 20, 2021
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3 min.
But we forget that earlier simple html did not allow to create high-quality layout and only with the advent of html 5 successful publications like The New York Times began to invest in resource-intensive content. They understand that a longread will live much longer than a short text, these are investments that bring dividends for a long time.

What makes a long text a longread
Formally, a 1200-word text is considered a longread. But it is not the length of the text that determines

Where to start working on a volumetric material

First, you need to work hard on the library shop content, rather than thinking about a set of effective techniques.

Choose a topic that can be developed into a lengthy text. It can be a painful and problematic topic in your field, it can be something controversial, or it can be new and require explanatory material. Cases, personal stories, reports, combining several short stories under one canvas – these are the most common forms in which longreads are presented.

Another important element of many effective longreads is the story. After all, it is the story that promises that a long read will be exciting. So think about how you can develop your topic through references to events, the past, personalities, or “drama.”

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January 5, 2021
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How to structure material and captivate the reader with the right style
There are three principles of how people perceive long texts. If you take all of them into account in the structure, the chances of attracting the reader’s attention will increase several times.

Develop meaning for “readers”.
The first type of people are pure readers. They will read the headline, then move on to the first sentence, then the second, the third, and continue reading if the text remains meaningful and engaging.
Think through the organization of the text and subheadings for the “evaluators”.

What Distracts You From Long Reading and How to Avoid It

Headlines based on copywriter formulas, what-where-when, inverted pyramid, etc., do not contribute to long reading.
With such headlines, we form the expectation of receiving something concise, fast and capacious, and seeing a lot of text under the headline, the audience gets scared.

Solution: come up with a headline that will say that there is a big and interesting story behind the topic, set the reader up for a valuable pastime in the next 20-40-60 minutes.
Don’t distract a person with an excess of multimedia.

Solution: when you start writing the material, immediately think about where to support the text with multimedia layout – designe quotes, videos, photos, infographics, maps, etc. Their number should be minimal. Such elements are used only to enhance the meaning of the text and most often they are separate. For example, all interactive things can be in a column on the edge of the main text.
The same applies to all pop-ups, subscription forms, buttons, etc.
They need to be thought how to write an engaging longread in the age of short texts out in advance so as not to irritate the reader. For example, if you are describing a case, it would be absolutely appropriate to provide a button for the tool you just mention. But this should be done after at least part of the expertise has been submitte, and not right away.

How to keep a longread alive

Determine the priority materials for maintenance based on the number of readings and regularly collect analytics on them.
Use Google Analytics to assess the depth of your article reading and use it to determine at what point readers lose interest.
See which parts of the text are drowning readers, rewrite them or remove unnecessary parts from the layout.
Edit the text based on valuable comments usa bu from readers or updates in the area the longread describes. In the latter case, you get a bonus – you can talk about the update and get new views on the wave of fresh news.
Be sure to improve the material, but stop in time when the topic has already outlived its usefulness, and it is better to direct resources to creating new materials.