5 Ways to Differentiate Yourself & Generate New Income Streams

by Ivan on January 13, 2010

Tom Peters says, “the value of services will continue to fall” and that the only way to survive is to differentiate yourself from the competition. Is this true? How do you as a technical writer make yourself stand out from the crowd? If you don’t, what impact could this have on your career?

How to Differentiate Yourself

Here are five suggestions to do this:

  1. Video Blogging – use your Camtasia skills to create videos that show how products work. Cisco is doing a great job in this area. They gave flip cameras to the IT people and encouraged them to make short, snappy videos that show how to use their hardware, networks, and systems. Which would you prefer? To read 20 pages or watch a 3 minute video?
  2. Screencasting Training – now that you know how to make the videos, why not use this to teach others to do this same. Position yourself as a screen-casting expert, setup the blog, get involved, and show others how this works. FWIW there is a very active video marketing group on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanwalsh) that you may want to join.
  3. Web-based Training – if you’ve spent years writing guides, you must have developed an in-depth knowledge of 2 or 3 fields. See which of these are most in demand (Google searches and forums will be a starting point) and then develop training modules that you can present online. Lynda.com does a great job in offering training over the web. Sign up with them and see how it works.
  4. Social Media Writing – you know how to write, right? Well, most people don’t. As Social Media continues to explode leverage your writing skills and show (“the benefit o f communicating well on Facebook is…”) others how to get their message across on these Social Network. Look at how Debbie Weil does it. http://www.debbieweil.com
  5. Business English – the upside of all these jobs getting shipped to India, China, Brazil is that their Management teams want to do more business in the west. How can you help them write better reports, communicate more clearly, protect them from being misunderstood – you get the idea!

These are just five ways you can stand out from the crowd and position yourself as a specialist. My suggestion is to look at who is doing this right, e.g. Debbie Weil, and study them diligently. Then develop an action plan and start getting the rewards you deserve.

What other careers can you think of? Is it possible to differentiate yourself as a Technical Writer? How would you do it?

PS: Tom Peters is here: Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution and Debbie Weil The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right is here.

Need help with your web writing? Click here for a Free Quote


Click here to get a free quote

  • http://twitter.com/wareprise wareprise

    It is really scary that “the value of services will continue to fall”.

    I personally believe that the service industry is not an easy industry to work in because it's all about people and human relations. You may be an owner of an IT consulting company with 10 super IT consultants, but the moment they all leave your service oriented organization is virtually gone.

    I think all the above suggestions are possible ways for technical writers to look into. But even before point #1, I would recommend technical writers to have a space of their own on the Internet to write and share their knowledge. Diving straight into video blogging could be a challenge for those who have not experienced writing their first post online.

    But if one can take up the challenge of video blogging right away, one cool online tool that I can recommend is Screentoaster: http://www.screentoaster.com which basically allows you to capture a video of your screen. You can even use Screentoaster to create your very own web based training with complete audio and video capabilities.

    As for differentiating myself as a Technical Writer, the only thing that I can think of is to try to help people as much as possible by sharing any technical knowledge that I have through blogging and helping out people in forums.

    http://www.wareprise.com

  • http://www.ivanwalsh.com Ivan Walsh

    That all makes sense.

    I guess the way I see it is that all of us (not just technical writers) need to see where we can carve out a niche or specialty for ourselves… and then (hopefully) try to dominate it.

    But, like you said, you need to take it one step at a time, and get the foundation in place first.

    The product you mentioned looks very impressive – another great tool to work with. Thanks for that.

    PS – Jing is another free screen recording app that you might want to check out.

  • http://www.ivanwalsh.com/2010/01/getting-started-business-consultant-tips/ 12 Steps To Getting Started as a Business Consultant | Self Starter

    [...] the leader — Tom Peters, Chris Brogan, Richard Branson, ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ have all helped me in different [...]

  • BillKerschbaum

    I haven't read Tom Peters, so I'm a little ignorant on his reasons and the exact meaning of his statement, but I have a hard time believing that the value of services will fall (maybe I misunderstand what he means by “value”). Marketing is becoming more relationship-based, social media is on fire, and people are valuing authenticity and connectedness more. These are core traits of a service. Seems to me that services are in big demand.

    But I do agree that service providers (of all kinds) must differentiate themselves from the crowd – perhaps now more than ever. Tom, these are great thoughts on differentiating. Thanks!

  • http://www.ivanwalsh.com Ivan Walsh

    Hi Bill,

    Part of what TP is referring to is activities such as outsourcing/offshoring back office activities to low cost regions. When he say services, he’s usually referring to manufacturing, front line workers.

    Not sure marketing would come under this umbrella. Depends on definitions, I guess.

    FWIW one of his arguments is that if companies were more creative – not just paying lip service to creativity but having it run ALL the way thru the organization, in its dna – then quality goes up and costs come down.

    This would trigger (stimulate) a more sophisticated service industry that what the US is currently producing.

    He’s a great writer (also @tompeters on twitter) and takes a dim view of how the US let things slide. With that said, he doesn’t rant. For every flaw he sees, he proposes a solution. His site is worth checking out.

  • BillKerschbaum

    Ah. That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

  • Dr Jaime Enriquesz

    Tom Peters is – almost – always right.

    and what he says about manufacturinfg and services is true – the US needs to change it business model or it gets left in the dust

    Dr Jaime Enriquesz
    San Diego

Previous post:

Next post: