In May 2016, ToucanTech (fondly know at the time as Pelicanconnect) gave schools the opportunity to receive a free workshop teaching the techniques behind enticing and engaging online content. We ran two separate workshops at St Edward’s and Prior’s Field Schools in the UK.

The workshops were facilitated by Seb Murray, a freelance journalist and the Editor of our sister company, BusinessBecause.com – an MBA news site with 100,000 monthly readership. Seb is a passionate journalist with an instinct for a compelling headline and his articles are consistently ranked at top of Google News.

Through our work running BusinessBecause and helping schools launch and grow their ToucanTech networks we know how essential publishing appealing and evocative content is for engaging your alumni. Seb quoted two facts about online news:

a) 73% of all news is consumed via the web*

b) People spend an average of 3 minutes on a website at any given time**

With these two facts in mind, the aim of the workshop was to give schools an insight into how a journalist goes about selecting a story, finding the best angle and then ensuring the headline and the introduction are alluring enough to encourage people to click through in a highly competitive market place.

Both workshops were well received. Polly from Prior’s Field called it ‘Quick and effective workshop run by Seb which has made us think about the construction of a news story – particularly the importance of an attention-grabbing headline.’

Whilst Laura from St Edward’s School said ‘It was insightful to obtain a professional perspective on writing online content utilising relevant examples specific to the sector. Seb suggested sources of potential news stories tailored to our communication needs, and encouraged creative thinking for content creation that is truly newsworthy for our audience.’

If you would like to be sent the slide pack from our “online news” workshop to peruse at your leisure then please email us at info@toucantech.com

*Source: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

**Source: Pew Research Center, State of the News Media 2015