What I learned this week from “The Art and Business of Online Writing”, was that after choosing and creating your category, you can niche down to make it even more specific. Putting pen to paper, I did the exercise. I learned this exact same principle in the solo business marketing workshop that I signed up for last spring. We were taught to create what is termed a “log line” and to make it as specific as possible, to specify to ourselves and our target audience who we were, who our market was, and what strategy we were using.
After I specified: “I write about accelerated learning habits for aspiring writers and learners of skills like myself.” In my opinion, everyone should learn either soft skills, marketable skills, rare skills, and hard skills. Skill building is the point. I've dabbled in a handful of skills before and I just remember it being a joyful experience [except when the content and performance level became more advanced!] that is both beneficial for yourself and others.
I myself am an aspiring writer and I write about my experience learning how to write [I hope to write for, or even just work for, an e-learning company or a company involved in innovative online education, sustainability, music, or foreign languages]. I studied copywriting for a little while as I documented in my previous posts. Now, I am learning the art of online writing.
Another thing that I learned from from my current read was that being different is better than focusing on being better than your competition. In my previous post about this book, I mentioned how interesting I thought it was to create your own category. I learned that it is better to resonate with your target reader than to beat your competition.
I also learned the how-to of creating your category, brainstorming some ideas based on this exercise. I remembered that I enjoyed the “journal fiction” genre when I was younger [the fiction genre where authors write their work in the format of journal entries]. I matched this “journal fiction” genre with other genres and audiences. Examples include the utopian fiction genre [as opposed to dystopian], the how-to genre, the “creative work culture” genre, the self-learning audience, and the eco-friendly audience.
Cole recommends giving yourself six months to gather data on what your most popular categories are. Look at other writers of your chosen category and just do what those writers are doing, only more consistently. And when there is no actual writing getting done, techniques like “hashtag stacking” and “engagement hacking” don't mean a lot. So only focus on growth techniques after building a consistent writing habit.
For me, “practicing in public” means writing more, publishing more, and networking more on LinkedIn. It also means starting to share my content on Substack, a writing platform I've been consuming content on for over two months.