Writers Unbound

You’ve developed an area of expertise, or, I hope, multiple areas of expertise. If you’ve become known as an expert, it’s time to take advantage of that status and expand.

What else can you call it?

Meet Suzy Q. Writer. She’s been a freelancer for three years. She has developed a strong expert status in the area of “women’s health,” and now she has her pick of several well-trafficked women’s interest and health websites that would welcome her writing. It’s been lucrative, but the material is sounding stale and she would like to expand. Her resume is too full of clips that sound like simplified pieces from a medical journal. She sees great blogging jobs and social sites and magazines calling for parenting and nature articles, which she would love to write, but she doesn’t think she sounds qualified.

What should she do? First, she should think of other angles from which to present her expertise in women’s health. Has she done pieces on natural health? Has she written about psychological well-being? The effects of stress? Those can be presented as (respectively) articles addressing a natural lifestyle, self-care and personal growth, and the importance of good time management. She may need to rework those articles a little to emphasize slightly different points, but the bulk of the material is there. Now she has three more areas in which to market her writing skills.

What are the related areas?

Another natural step from women’s health, for Suzy, is the more general women’s interest. If she is interested in writing about nature and parenting, she can use her knowledge of women’s health to write a great article about how outdoor activities create a healthier lifestyle or about the importance of Mom exercising good self-care in order to care for her children. Both of those articles are equally related to women’s health and to nature or parenting, respectively.

From there she just needs to keep taking small steps toward those other areas in which she has interest. She might have to write a few articles unpaid to present on her own website or on article databases (which might pay; some do, some don’t), but that small amount of time will allow her to walk into a new area and find new clients.

How can you expand your services?

The other option for expansion is not to change your area of expertise, necessarily, but to look at additional services you can provide in that area. If Suzy can handle writing more on women’s health, she can look for a health-oriented blogging job on a women’s interest site. As she gains blogging experience, she can use that on her resume to gain entry to other blogging jobs which may have related but slightly different subject areas.

Suzy can also look at reworking her old material into reports, fact sheets, and ebooks, which she can market and sell herself or sell to clients. She could begin a women’s health podcast, and include a two-minute section on Nature and a two-minute section on Parenting with each podcast.

What other markets can you reach?

The last option for expansion (at least, the last one I’ll discuss today) is the look for new markets. Suzy could take a step back from the online world, print out her best clips, and approach a local newspaper about doing a weekly column on women’s lifestyle and health.
Suzy could call non-profit organizations and women’s shelters that might be able to make use of pamphlets on basic hygiene, sexual safety, and self-care during pregnancy. She could being submitting articles on women’s health to national magazines; once one of her articles is accepted, she can submit articles, using that clip as a sample, on any other subject she desires. She will have the publication status; she just has to work with it a bit.

So what can you do to expand your area of expertise? If you have more than one, you’re already a step ahead. Don’t box yourself in! Get out there and

Make it a good day.