Should You Specialize in Website Content?

Written by James - 57 Comments

Buyers for website content are out there. Phenomenal numbers of websites are launching daily. If it isn’t a new site selling services, it’s a site selling products. If it isn’t a website, it’s a blogsite or it’s a profile page. Website content is everywhere, and there are plenty of jobs available for writers.

The problem is that, too often, writers land a nice website content gig, but the job has to be redone, reworked and revised. The majority of clients who come to us for website content have one common complaint: they’ve been burned.

Writers are screwing up.

Jack of All Trades

Writing is a common skill. If you can write, you can write anything. Right?

Wrong. The skills required to write particular types of content aren’t the same – and there’s the catch. A great article writer generally sucks at blogging, and bloggers typically don’t write well for magazines.
When a writer tries to be a jack of all trades, he or she is generally master of none.

There are subtle nuances between good writers and specialists. Those nuances matter a great deal, but most writers ignore the differences. These writers believe they are good at writing – and that’s wonderful – but they have trouble accepting that they can’t write different types of content.

Even worse, they believe that all content is the same. It’s not.

Are We All Specialists?

Think of the matter like an airplane pilot – he has different training and qualifications depending on whether he flies a fighter jet or an airbus. Pilots can’t just change planes and expect to be crack fliers.
Each writer has his or her own particular set of strengths, experiences and skill set that creates good potential for a specialty.

Focusing on a specialty is smart. A specialty lets writers focus and become the best in one type of writing. It helps ensure survival by becoming the master of one versus the jack of all trades.

So are all writers specialists? Or can a writer learn how to be great in many types of writing?

The answer is common sense: you can learn anything that you want to learn, and you can learn it well. If you want to have two specialties (or three or four), you can – but you need to learn the proper techniques.

Who’s Flying the Plane?

Many writers glance at a job and think, “I can do that.” They are tempted by the prestige of a job, a nice rate, or the potential big break. They know they can write, and they write well. They believe that’s all it takes.

Besides, they’ve always wanted to branch out into website content. So they give it a shot. The problem? That writer is flying by the seat of his or her pants.

The buyer thinks a qualified pilot is flying the plane.

In our next post, we’ll cover some of the reasons website content falls flat and a few questions to ask that help your work fly high. Hint: it involves a little bit more than luck and a Superman cape.

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