"How do I sell my work?"
That is a question I have gotten a few times in the writing courses. I have found that it is usually asked when a researcher feels they need to find some clever way of making a paper appear to be better than they feel it is.
If you absolutely must think of “selling” research with writing, here is advice from people who regularly use writing to sell things: copywriters.
ADVICE FROM COPYWRITERS: PEOPLE WHO SELL with words
Here is what I learned from a copywriting course. Our instructor had worked for many years at a large, reputable agency in Boston, so I am assuming that what she advised was broadly in line with what most reputable agencies might tell their copywriters (whether the advice is followed is a separate question).
Have a strategy. Before you begin drafting, you need a strategy to guide the process.
In a research context, this means thinking through some of the big-picture questions: What is the research question you are answering? Why is it a useful question to answer? Who would value the answer? What evidence or arguments will people need to see in order to agree that your answer is plausible? How will this question and answer enrich the literature that already exists?
As part of your strategy, articulate the benefit to the consumer. When you are trying to sell something, you need to have a clear idea of how that thing will make life better for the person who buys it. In fact, you need to tell them exactly what the benefit to them will be.
In the research context, this might mean articulating how your paper could be useful for readers. What will be the benefit to them of reading your paper? What is it they need that your paper will offer them?
Promise the consumer exactly what you can deliver and no more. It is tempting to draft a grand opening to hook the consumer. But if the consumer tries your product and feels they did not get what you promised (implicitly or explicitly), you have lost their trust. So what you say at the outset should be entirely supported by what they experience later.
In a research context, we have all come across Introductions that open with a grand first paragraph or two. They might describe a question that many researchers have been trying to answer for a long time or they might offer a staggeringly huge number that feels relevant (even if it is not). The reader, hooked by the implied scale of the paper, then experiences a gradual let down: several paragraphs later, they discover that in fact the paper offers one small point on one aspect of that grand question; or they discover that while the question may have been the grand one suggested at the beginning, the method used to answer it falls far short. In such cases, the paper has promised more than it can deliver.
It is better to begin with a more modest opening that sets the right expectations about what, exactly, the paper offers.
Write many versions of everything and use feedback to choose the right one. Only a very small percentage of all the words that copywriters write end up in a final draft. To get to a good final draft, they write many versions of the same thing—even versions that aren't quite right—and reason through the choices with feedback from others. This process helps them to better understand both the product and customers’ views of it.
In a research context, a paper can be pitched in many different ways. Unfortunately, there is often no shortcut to figuring out which way is best. So write up several versions of everything: from the research question to entire sections (like the Introduction). Use feedback wherever you can get it to help you see why something works and, just as importantly, why it doesn't work. You will walk out of the process having learned valuable things about your readers and your own work.
Post by Varanya Chaubey
Image By Coca-Cola company [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
