Use Your Expertise to Improve Your Writing
As a writer, you may be called upon to wear many hats, covering topics ranging from breaking police news stories to your great aunt’s eulogy. Whether you write for a media source, blog, private company or your own creative projects, you may find yourself pulled in many different topic directions.
But before you begin harriedly typing away to meet everyone’s wishes, do yourself a favor and just say no to the projects or topics you have no interest or expertise in. Sure, we’d all like to be able to save the world and help everyone with our writing, but the truth is, the more you spread yourself thin and write about topics you have no knowledge of, the more your writing quality will deteriorate.
Think of your name as a brand and your writing as your product. The more writing you have associated with your name that lacks passion, knowledge or know-how, the less your brand will be worth. I am not saying to avoid risks or ventures in new subject areas, or to drop all writing jobs that pay your bills, but rather to focus as much energy as possible on the areas you know about and enjoy. As you write more on your niche topics, your audience will grow. Your experience and knowledge will shine through, and people will flock to your work.
Here are a few quick tips to help hone in on your best writing topics:
- Consider your job experience. What fields have you worked in and what can you share about them? Most of us have extensive insider’s tips from various jobs, but many people will not be able to express them as clearly or powerfully as a writer. Combine your real-world experience with your passion for writing to create winning blogs, articles or books.
- What are your hobbies? Think about what you love and how you can share your passion with others. I am a lifelong runner and fitness enthusiast, for example, so it felt like a natural progression for me to start writing fitness articles for Livestrong, as well as various magazines and newspapers.
- Dust off your credentials. Degrees and certifications give obvious clues to areas you are qualified to write about. If you have certifications or credentials in specific fields, mention them in your bio or articles so your readers know you are a qualified source of information.
- Earn credentials. Although I’ve ran competitively since seventh grade and have trained with several different coaches, I didn’t have any certifications to officially qualify me as an expert. So I decided to get my Road Runners Club of America running coach certification to add merit to my running articles. Since then I have launched my own running site, Runstreet, as well as gleaned many new writing ideas from clients I coach. And when people hire me to do fitness articles, I have credentials to back my words.
- Organize your goals. Brainstorm, create a collage or make a Venn diagram with your areas of expertise and writing goals to devise the best plan of action for your writing. If you want to make a Venn diagram, you can download a free Venn diagram template from Microsoft. Organize your Venn diagram according to your goals, interests and writing niche. For instance, I put my areas of expertise in the left circle, my writing goals in the right circle and resulting writing goals for my niche markets in the center. You can arrange your own diagram according to your own priorities and goals. Here is my sample diagram:
