Many experts believe the best way of ensuring your web content is interesting and compelling is to write about what you know rather than simply presenting a litany of dry information and facts. The fact is that authors who try to cover an unfamiliar topic without much information to go on will likely present that information in a mediocre or totally unconvincing manner. And since there is little window of opportunity for grabbing your reader’s attention, being unconvincing can result in a user who quickly clicks away to another website.
Writing What You Know—For Others
The problem with writing about what you know is that scores of web writers write for websites which belong to others. This means that on any given day web writers are writing about a slew of subjects they likely know little about and in some cases find the subject so uninteresting that they really don’t want to know that much. Authors take heed—try your best to never, ever approach a subject with that attitude or it is bound to come through in your writing. Just because you may not find the various types of environmentally-friendly paint a particularly compelling subject doesn’t mean you can’t write about it in such a way that will interest your readers.
And how do you do that you may wonder? Well, suppose you could care less whether your paint is environmentally friendly or not, but your readers actually do care? Approach your subject from your reader’s point of view. What would they want to know, what would make them care about this particular subject? Then, once you have those answers find out all you can about the subject until it actually becomes one of the things you know—then you can write about what you know. Writing about what you know does not limit you to writing only about encounters you’ve actually had, products you’ve actually tried or humans or animals you’ve actually met, it simply allows you to build on the foundation of what you know about life and humanity in order to create a compelling story. And after all, isn’t a compelling story the goal of every web writer?
Writing What You Know—For Yourself
If you are not limited to writing what other people pay you to write—not a bad gig, all in all—but are writing for yourself, they you have the opportunity to not only write about what you know but also to write what you want. One of the greatest benefits of having your own website or blog is that you are able to write about a subject which is very near to your heart. Writing for yourself gives you the freedom to use your unique life experiences and share them with your readers.
In some cases you may not know a lot about the subject you decide to write on, however it will likely be a subject which greatly interests you therefore the research is much less tedious than doing research for a subject which holds no interest for you. Aside from what interests you, write about the things that matter to you. If a subject matters deeply to you then you should be able to write about it in such a way that causes it to matter to your readers as well.
Venturing Outside What You Know
The flip side of writing about what you know is that this technique—unless you work hard at learning lots of new things—may never really stretch you as a writer. Writing out of your depth or about subjects you don’t know can actually take you into new and exciting territory if you open your mind to the possibilities. That being said, it is likely that you know lots more about lots more subjects than you even realize and in the end, every single article you write is just waiting to be shaped by your specific knowledge and imagination.
Tags: Lawyer Website Content
