Four Easy Steps to Writing an Article for WETT
Do you consider yourself well versed in a subject, potentially on the road to becoming — or already are — a Subject Matter Expert, or SME for short? Have you ever wanted to impart some of that knowledge to a wider audience, but don’t really know how or where to start? The simple answer is at the beginning. Keep reading to get yourself on the way to satisfying that inner journalistic spirit!
Step 1: Pick a topic. It’s key to narrow the scope of what you’re going to write about, otherwise you may ramble and go off on a tangent. People don’t dedicate a lot of time to fully reading an article, so keep it simple!
Step 2: Figure out who your audience is. An article written for industry professionals tends to use more technical lingo that other professionals understand. However, a homeowner will be bamboozled by reading the same content, because their level of comprehension doesn’t have years of training and experience behind it.
Step 3: Get the facts. Seriously, it’s not hard to find resources that can support your perspective nowadays using the almighty internet. It’s like the Encyclopedia Britannica on steroids. There are free online citation generators that you can use to cite your sources. We’re not picky about MLA or APA.
Step 4: Start writing. Even if it’s a crappy first draft, it’s a start and can only get better. You may realize what you originally thought was one topic, can be turned into two. That’s ok. Now there’s MORE content than you thought you had, which makes doing it again easier 😊
Step 4b: Figure out a title – optional. Do this whenever you want, but I like doing it at the end. My high school geography teacher taught me that. I was procrastinating on an assignment and when he asked me why, the conversation went something like this:
Cindy: I can’t figure out the title.
Mr. Menzo: Why do you need to have a title first?
Cindy: I was taught to start at the beginning, which was a title according to {English teacher whose name I forget).
Mr. Menzo: How’s that was working out for you?
Cindy: (Surly teenage glare.)
Mr. Menzo (Chuckling): When you turn in your work, will it have a title?
Cindy: (Surly teenage glare continues, but interest is piqued.)
Mr. Menzo: Just get writing. You know what you want to write about and 9 times out of 10, you’ll figure out the title during the writing process. Titles don’t “have” be the first step, so long as it gets in there by the time you hand your work in.
Step 5: Read your article out loud. You’d be surprised how many times this helps you catch and fix errors that you wouldn’t have picked up on otherwise.
Lastly, don’t forget to submit your work. No point in going through all the above steps if you’re not going to put it out there! I hope this inspires you to put proverbial pen to paper and get that knowledge out of your head and into a format that others can benefit from. Submit any articles for review and consideration by the Communications Committee via email to: bucklecindy@gmail.com and copy to info@wettinc.ca
*Mr. Menzo currently lives in BC and, yes, I’m still in touch with him. No, I still don’t remember the English teacher’s name.