Writing What You Don’t Know

I’m a geek. I like comic books, being a movie critic, playing video games, and reading about the recent misadventures of Lindsay Lohan. Ask me to write about any of that stuff and I’ve got you covered. Even though I played sports until college, I was never really invested in major sports teams. So when my boss asked me to write blogs about Hunter Pence from the Philadelphia Phillies and his “Let’s Go Eat!” campaign, needless to say I wasn’t very excited. I don’t follow the Phillies, and didn’t know where to start. I feel like this could be a problem with a lot of young copywriters. Sure we like to write, but there are topics that don’t interest certain people. So how do we deal? Working at Hashtag Multimedia taught me a few ways to conquer writing about stuff you don’t know.

I started out researching the topic until my eyes were bleeding. I would pull in sources from everywhere on the internet to have some basic knowledge of the situation. Then, I would look to Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums to see what is being said about Hunter and if there is any recent news trending. Once i started writing, I would try and come up with an eye-catching headline, maybe a pun or play on words. My first paragraph would start with an idea, then the body would inform the audience with the story, and then the conclusion would bring the original idea from the first paragraph full circle. I always remembered to write it without sounding too professional. I’ve found that people respond better to blog posts when they sound like a normal person talking. Relate it to what you know or what’s trending. There will be a lot of blogs saying the same thing, so by making yours come off differently, it will seem more appealing.

At the end of the day, it still can be boring, but I would know I put a lot of effort into it. After writing blogs about the Phillies, I actually gained a lot of knowledge about them and even started watching some games here and there. That’s the cool part about writing what you don’t know, you may end up becoming really interested in it!