Writing is a powerful way to share your ideas and interests —there’s always room for high-quality thoughts/opinions. It’s enormously impactful as a tool to advance your career. When you create content that informs, educates or offers advice, solutions, and guidance — you help others and network with relevant people.
Think about this scenario for a minute: You publish a post outlining suggestions, opinions and thoughts on a topic you deeply care about and it’s picked up by the online community. People share it on social media, it gets mentioned in other articles online, and maybe even some curated newsletters.
This kind of exposure could build your network, your audience, and attract the right of people to you. Writing opens so many doors and even if it’s not your career choice, it can lead to discovering a new career path. If you are serious about it, you can make it a thriving career.
Yes, getting out in the real world and networking is important, but there’s only so much time you can spend on networking efforts. Instead, writing can make the right type of people come to you. A post can allow like-minded folks to come your way. A well-written post can do a lot for your career.
The thing that happens which you don’t see until you write is that your content engages some of the smartest people. And some of them will reach out to you with an opportunity at some point. Writing can help you distil the experiences, thoughts and ideas that you have learned during your education, career and life journey. It can refine your thoughts.
Think of your writing on the same timescale as any other career, approach it with all seriousness and you will be discovered. Since I started writing on Medium, my work has been featured on Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, CNBC, Inc. Magazine, Pocket Hits, Thought Catalog, etc. I have also written a book, published by a reputable publisher in London.
The single most important advice I can give to actually write is to write. Today, I make a living from multiple income sources, including sponsorships, book sales, courses, and the Medium partner program.
Many writers have similar stories. Sarah Cooper worked at Google until she wrote a Medium story that absolutely blew up (the story has 79K claps today). This story led Cooper to quit her job and launch full-time into a career as a comedian and author.
It’s insanely easy to start writing— but the hard part is finding your voice, figuring out topics that are interesting for other people to read, and building a long-term habit. You can go from “wanting to be a writer” to “being one” by scheduling time for it. I write every morning. If I don’t write before midday, I probably won’t write at all. So I choose to write before 12 noon and spend the rest of the day working on other projects.
If you want to embrace daily writing as a habit, try writing every day for at least 30 days right here on Medium. Don’t aim for 1000 words if you can’t sustain it. And don’t worry about building an immediate audience. Your initial topics and format should be whatever you can do easily and maintain some sort of frequency. Commit to being relentlessly helpful, no matter how small.
When the 30 days are up, go back and review what you’ve learned, the progress you’ve made, what went well, topics you enjoy writing about, what didn’t resonate with readers, and do more of what works.
Your job is to show up every day and become a reliable source. Great work, like a healthy financial portfolio, takes time to mature. Your best work will emerge with patient attention, time, and strategic action.
Many people write to spread their thoughts, some want to make a difference, others want to build tribes. Ultimately, writing has to be a good fit for you and you need to be serious about learning more, adapting and doing more of what works for you.
“You can’t control people’s reaction to your work, but you can give them more opportunities to react to it, simply by writing and publishing more. Be consistent, be seen, get noticed, grow a following, and maybe… get lucky,” says Dave Schools, Co-founder of Hopin. You absolutely do not have to be an expert. In short, pick your niche, stay focused, and do your best work.