Why Does So Much Research Organization Content Suck?

The research organization as bad date (and one fix to the problem)

Credit: txmx 2/Flickr

Content by research organizations (not the actual research itself, but the content that translates and promotes their research and applied expertise) has a problem. Too often — actually, 85-90% of the time — it sucks.

Such thoroughgoing mediocrity is amazing, considering the nearly two decades of energy and effort — the research, the books, the trainings, the awards, the silent mime exercises — so many have devoted to improving research communications and researchers as communicators. I subscribe to a lot of content (to the point of slightly concerning my accountant), I’m promiscuous about what I consume day to day, and research organization content is consistently the most boring, the most dismissible in my feed. If I didn’t have to keep tabs on it as part of my practice, I would avoid it.

It’s Not About You, It’s About Us

Why is content from research organizations still so stubbornly unappealing? For a ton of reasons, including: There’s zero market pressure on these organizations to do better. Many of them criminally under-resource their communications, and hire entry level communicators who don’t know how to make good content. And then there’s the still-potent fear among academics and academic-wannabes that making something too accessible makes it seem less scholarly or credible.

But here’s one reason we almost never talk about, because it just seems to be the way it is: The content is always about the organization.

Well, of course it is, you say! Our audience wants to hear about what we’re doing! That’s why they’ve subscribed!

Really?

Imagine a podcast that was only about your organization’s own news and services or products. That only appeared when your organization had something new to discuss. And that only interviewed people from your organization. Even you’d have trouble listening to it, other than as a sleep aid.

Yet, in a world otherwise relentlessly hyper-targeted and hyper-relevant to our interests and needs and wants, that’s exactly what your research organization is likely doing. You’re barging into our feeds, asking us to stop living in that world and to suddenly make time and space in our lives for what you and your colleagues want to talk about. About what your organization has done (oh, OK, also what you’ve done with partners). When your content does ask questions, it’s rarely a question we want answered or realize we haven’t been asking but should be. You’re asking us to give you a content discount when there is no such thing in today’s media landscape.

You’re a bad date. You think you’re making conversation with us, but it’s all about you.

You could develop a content strategy to address this problem, and you should. But while you’re spinning up that strategy, there’s a simpler fix.

Besides talking about themselves a lot, most research organizations also convene. They hold events for which they bring experts from outside their organization together with their own experts to discuss questions of the day from research- and expertise-based vantage points. If these organizations have a podcast, those in all likelihood also convene outside experts to speak on issues of moment.

Convening is, in fact, a fundamental outreach and partnership strategy of research organizations. It’s part of your mission. It’s in your DNA.

So start thinking about how you could convene in more of your content — even the stuff that’s not an event or a podcast.

How Convening Content Works in Real Life

A client — a relatively new organization just starting to do content in earnest — was having trouble filling a content calendar for social. I said: You’re a convener, that’s a big part of your brand. So convene.

For instance: Come up with a question everyone in one of your organization’s domain is talking about, and ask six experts and stakeholders outside of your organization (and two within it) each to give you 2-minute, 250-word answers.

Run those under the header of the question. Promote them under same.

Your organization now owns the question, at least for a while.

Rinse and repeat with other questions in your domains. Also: Come back to these experts six months or a year or two years later and ask followup questions in different ways.

Bingo — you’ve just 4x’d the amount of content you previously had, and at least 10x’d its strategic value to your organization.

Are many research organizations doing convening content. Of course not! That’s part of the appeal — you can be a first mover.

The power of a research organization isn’t just or even primarily in what it can produce on its own. It’s in how it uses its credibility to bring others to the table, and in the heat and light these perspectives create when arrayed together. Convening content forces your organization to break out of its solipsism, become more responsive to the world and stop pretending it’s immune from the first law of all content: Be interesting.