Not so long ago a new concept appeared in the textual Internet space - Longrid. It quickly gained popularity both among customers and performers. Let's try to figure out what it is and how to make long reads.
A couple of years ago, the assertion that short texts were good for the Internet and no longer needed long ones was predominant, since reading them for a long time. But in 2014, a turning point came. Newswhip organized a study of news materials, during which it turned out that the largest number of reads was collected by 2 types of texts: very short (up to 500 words) and long (from 1200 words). The latter, in fact, will interest us.
Definition
Longrid is articles created for long reading. The text in them is usually (however, this is not a strict rule) broken into parts using a variety of multimedia elements: infographics, photographs, etc. This article format helps to read material from any electronic medium. In addition, this arrangement of the text contributes to the full immersion of the reader in the subject. Contrary to popular belief, long reads are not some kind of new phenomenon. Many print magazines already use this genre to create articles.
Types of Long Reads
Initially, longreads were written only by journalists for magazines and newspapers. But gradually the Internet makes a difference. Various blog platforms even began to appear, automatically creating a new genre for the Internet.
As a rule, any large article is already considered Longrid. However, there is a special subspecies of this genre, which is now very popular on the Internet - multimedia longread. The emphasis here is not so much on the test, but on such components as photos, videos, infographics, interactive tapes, presentations, maps, audio files, charts, etc.
Such large projects are not created by one journalist. Entire teams work on them, which include producer, journalist, designer, photographer, videographer. Consequently, the budget for creating such a longread will be rather big. Therefore, most of the projects now existing were created by the editors of major news agencies, newspapers and magazines. For example, these are TASS, Kommersant, AiF, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and so on.
Reason for popularity
First of all, Longrid is a great opportunity to attract the attention of an audience. Therefore, so many publications appeal to this genre. Readers are thoroughly immersed in “information noise,” and Longrid can quite easily suppress these “interferences."
Today, the news does not produce the effect that was produced a dozen years ago. The novelty of the article is lost so quickly that it doesn’t matter who first reported what happened. Indeed, the copyright component of the text will not protect. This situation threatens publishers with bankruptcy. Due to the long reads, the media not only attracts the reader, but also forces them to return to the visited site, share links with friends on social networks, and bookmark the pages they like.
Characteristic
But anyway, Longrid is a text. And we will present the characteristics of this text below:
- Volume - not less than 1500 words. It should be noted that the most popular long-range The New York Times, dedicated to illegal immigrants from Indonesia and collected about 47,000 posts, consisted of 10,500 words.
- Particular attention is paid to information. It should be very high quality and stand out against the background of everything that is published on other resources.
- Working on LongRid requires a lot of time and effort. The author must study the topic and show it from an unusual angle, find a new understanding, otherwise the reader will be disappointed with the article.
- Themes for such texts should always go beyond the bounds of a specific situation. They should describe new trends, phenomena, major changes, and so on.
- In addition, greater visibility is needed, which will facilitate the perception of the reader - illustrations, photos, videos, graphics, etc.
Longridge Creation
Longrid in its structure resembles a designer. The text in this genre is collected from fragments of stories, reports, and then supplemented by some missing information. But this constructor is going so that the reader can get comprehensive information on the topic by the end of the article. Typically, an article is compiled in chronological order. But there are projects where the reader himself decides which part to read to, which direction to move.
Algorithm
Like many genres, LongRed is essentially a template. That is, to write an article on any topic, you must follow the same pattern. We will consider it:
- First you need to understand who the text will be for. That is, to determine the target audience and its interests, to "draw" an alleged portrait of the reader.
- Now the topic and the position from which it will be revealed are selected. The idea is selected based on the preferences of the target audience. You should not try to write a scientific article overloaded with terminology, since no one will read it. It is always necessary to focus on the reader. And if the topic is chosen quite extensive, then highlight one of its aspects.
- Before you begin, make a plan. This will help, on the one hand, to tune in to the working spirit, and on the other hand, to understand what you get in the end. In addition, to write a longread, you just need a plan, since large amounts of information are difficult to structure and it is easy to miss something important.
It is recommended to make a plan on special cards - it will be much easier to develop the correct structure and select the necessary interactive elements (photos, graphics, videos, etc.). If the whole team is working on the longrid, then without a plan it will be impossible to distribute tasks among the participants. And remember, the best longreads were written according to a pre-designed structure.
- The next stage is the most important and difficult - to collect the necessary materials and prepare them. Visual illustrations should preferably be developed in parallel so that they harmoniously fit into the text.
- The prepared material must be executed and published. Today, there are a large number of different servers that can help with this.
- The final stage is promotion. It can be started even before the publication of the LongRead.
Can Longrid be used for commercial purposes?
First, let's answer the question: what will Longrid tell readers about? Its themes can be any, but it should be an informational text. By itself, it should not carry an advertising orientation, since no one will read it. But you can still use Longrid for commercial purposes. How? Very simple.
The fact is that such a text attracts readers. Thus, the constant publication of longreads will increase the traffic to your site and the time users spend on it. Plus, such projects attract traffic from social networks. Thus, commercial longread is neither advertising nor selling text. It serves to attract potential customers to the site, and can also provide useful information about the company itself, the services it provides, and so on.
Longrid: examples
Examples of this genre are articles in magazines such as Around the World and its overseas version, GEO. Note that these publications turned to long reads even before such texts became popular on the Internet. Therefore, on the pages of these magazines you can find many examples of the genre that interests us.
Despite the enormous popularity of LongReads, it is impossible to say unequivocally that the future of online publications is behind this genre. Much depends on how well journalists learn to work with such texts, work through them, and most importantly, whether they can understand that it is first and foremost necessary to focus on the reader.
Now longrid are actively used mainly only in the information environment. For commercial and business purposes, they are practically not used. But in these areas, this genre has considerable prospects.