Take Your Professionalism to the Next Level: Publish Your Knowledge

Knowledge is power.

From a young age, we learn that how much we earn is related to how much we know. An attorney who has practiced employment law for 15 years can keep clients out of costly legal predicaments, and can thus charge higher fees than a recent law school graduate can. A journeyman machinist with extensive knowledge of materials, tools, and techniques can solve a much broader range of problems than an apprentice, and can do it more quickly with less waste and error. A seasoned management consultant is paid well because she has done a few tours of duty in several companies and learned how to manage organizational dynamics, corporate politics, and internal communications in ways that improve the bottom line.

Because our knowledge is valuable, our instinct is to treat it like intellectual property: we tend to hoard and protect it, sharing it only sparingly with people who hire us (or keep us on their payroll). Though this behavior is natural and understandable, it’s often not in our best interest: we can often gain more by publishing our knowledge than by trying to keep it to ourselves.

What Publishing Your Knowledge Can Do for You

Whether you work for a single employer or serve multiple clients, publishing your knowledge can benefit you in multiple ways. It can:

• Increase Your Visibility

The word “publish” derives from the Latin word for “public”: it’s all about making something available to a lot of people. When you publish, you offer information to a potentially wide audience, and if what you offer is valued, more people will become aware of you and have a good reason to remember you.

• Position You as a Thought Leader

In any professional community, there are certain people who are widely known and held in high esteem because they consistently deliver value to the community by sharing useful information, thoughtful perspectives, and innovative ideas. You may not feel that you have brilliant insights that will transform your field, but you can still become viewed as a thought leader by regularly publishing information and perspectives that help other professionals become better at what they do.

• Raise Your Credibility

Few things establish credibility more effectively than authorship. When you publish your knowledge in written form, you’ve put a stake into the ground and demonstrated commitment to your ideas.

Everyone I know who has written a book has told me that their considerable effort was unlikely to ever be justified by royalties from book sales. So why did they write the book? In a word: credibility. By publishing their knowledge in book form, they immediately positioned themselves as subject matter experts, and started conversations with prospective clients and business associates at higher levels than they otherwise could have. They’ve gotten leads and referrals for more business, invitations to speak at conferences, and higher perceived value, all benefits that have greatly outweighed the value of their book royalties.

You don’t necessarily need to commit yourself to publishing a whole book in order to build credibility. Many thought leaders publish articles or blog posts on public platforms like LinkedIn.com and Medium.com, or their own personal websites. Such pieces are much easier to get done than big book projects, and allow you to steadily deliver valuable content. (Some bloggers have ended up republishing collections of their various articles in book format.)

• Improve Your Networking Conversations

After you’ve organized your thoughts on a subject into an article, you’ll typically find the key points easy to work into a casual conversation, like the kind you may have in networking situations. Rather than diving into details, you can simply refer people to your published content for the full story. This frees you up to touch on more topics in the conversation, or to have conversations with more people without feeling like you’re constantly repeating yourself. When you’ve built up a library of articles, you may find yourself citing several of them in the course of a networking session, and every one of those citations can create a motive for people to follow up with you and develop a deeper connection.

• Generate Goodwill

People who give generously, without concern for what they might get in return, tend to be well-liked. When you share your knowledge generously, many people will be inspired to help you in whatever way they can. (For more about developing a mindset of generosity, see my article Moving Your Thinking Beyond 'What's In It for Me?')

• Open New Opportunities

Adding up all of the above benefits, it’s easy to see how publishing valuable content increases the opportunities available to you. More people will know about you, they’ll be aware of the value you offer, they’ll have some degree of trust in you, and they’ll be motivated to help you. You’ll likely get citations, referrals, invitations, and offers that you would never have gotten if you hadn’t published your knowledge.

But is Publishing Really for Me?

Maybe. Probably. Who knows? Clearly, publishing isn’t for everyone. It requires time, effort, diligence, and decent writing skills. I’ve encouraged many professionals to publish, and though most can appreciate the benefits discussed above, many have told me about obstacles that have kept them from doing it. Below are some common objections I’ve heard, and ways to reframe and overcome those obstacles.

• “If I give away my knowledge, no one will have reason to hire me!”

Here’s the counter-intuitive truth: even when you give people the knowledge needed to solve problems, they’ll often hire someone else to solve them anyway. They may prefer to stay focused on other issues, or have the assurance that their problem is being handled by a subject matter expert. How do they find that subject matter expert? It often traces back to something that expert published.

• “I don’t feel comfortable with putting myself out there.”

Welcome to the club! Most people feel uncomfortable about speaking in public, and writing in public can bring up a lot of the same emotions. But in both cases, you can reduce discomfort through practice, and get yourself to a point where you experience no discomfort as you reap the benefits of putting yourself out there. Start small, with a short piece and a small audience, and ask for feedback. As you build skills and confidence, you can ramp up the scope of what you undertake and the size of the audience you address.

• “My writing skills aren’t very good.”

If that’s really true, congratulations on having the self-awareness to be able to admit that. Now, what are you going to do about it?

You can ask friends to look over your drafts and give you feedback that can help you improve clarity and readability, and accommodate readers who have different perspectives. You could engage a ghost writer to transform your scattered thoughts into enthralling prose, though that can be costly and is probably not a practical long-term strategy. Considering how important writing skills are for success in many professional careers, it may be wise for you to attend a writing class or engage a writing coach to bring your skills up to a higher level.

• “I don’t know where to publish.”

If you already have a personal website, that’s an obvious place to post your content. If you don’t have a personal website, and aren’t ready to invest in setting one up, you can publish on Medium.com or one of the many alternative publishing platforms that now compete with it; while this can be a fast, easy way to get your content online, you should check for any fees and content ownership issues before choosing to go with one of these platforms. Another good place to publish is LinkedIn.com, which can make your content available to a huge audience, and readers can easily find out more about you through your profile. Wherever you publish, you can increase your viewership by announcing your content on social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

• “I don’t have anything unique or valuable to publish.”

Don’t underestimate what other people might find valuable. Every person has a unique perspective on the world, and there’s a good chance that yours will be different and interesting to other people. You can start by paraphrasing some content that you’ve found valuable (crediting the source, of course!), and add your own comments to highlight the most salient points, challenge assumptions, extend the concept to other cases, or otherwise add value to the existing content.

• “I don’t have the time to write.”

Every person gets the same number of hours in a day. Successful people have learned how to use their time to their greatest benefit. They typically invest time into developing themselves and in helping others, while forgoing lower-value activities. If tell yourself that you don’t have time to write, that simply means that you haven’t made it a priority.

No one can force you to make writing a priority, because this is all about choosing to do something for your own personal and professional growth. Just be honest about the choice you’re making, and what you might be giving up by choosing not to write. It’s all up to you.

Some Tips for Successful Self-Publishing

• Set Reasonable Expectations for Yourself

It’s easy to become paralyzed if you expect too much of yourself, or become fearful of not being good enough. As Suzy Kassem famously wrote, “Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.”

To avoid paralysis, set reasonable expectations for yourself. Think about your overall goals, and take small initial steps that will help you move toward them without overcommitting yourself. Avoid the demon of perfectionism by figuring out how you can achieve an acceptable level of quality without spending an excessive amount of time. Keep in mind that it’s generally better to publish decent content regularly than to publish exceptional material only sporadically.

• Start Small

Begin with a topic that in which you have strong interest, so that it will be easy to motivate yourself to share your thoughts about it, and write a small piece that you can complete without too much effort. When you publish it, use any positive feedback you get to help motivate yourself to write another piece, and repeat the process to keep yourself moving forward.

• Make a Plan

After you’ve published a few articles, assess your capacity, and use that information to work up a plan that aligns with your goals. Decide what kind of material you should be publishing: short posts, brief essays, longer articles, or perhaps something bigger like a chapter or a book. Choose a schedule that makes sense, and develop a cadence so that you keep moving forward.

• Build a Backlog

Keep a list of topics and ideas that you’d find interesting to write about. As additional themes occur to you, jot them on the list, so that you build up a backlog of potential article topics. When your calendar reminds you that it’s time to be publishing something, you’ll have a ready-to-go menu of options to choose from, so you won’t have to wrack your brain and hope for inspiration.

• Include Illustrations for Greater Impact

Our brains are much faster at processing images than text, and images can often convey emotional content more quickly and effectively than text can. Use these facts to your advantage by including relevant illustrations that reinforce the concepts you are expressing through your writing.

Of course, you need a source of illustrations, and you need to respect copyright law so that you don’t end up with legal problems. There are plenty of websites that will happily take your money for stock photos and illustrations, but you can also find plenty of websites that make images available for free. Search “free photos” or “free images” to find lists of websites that offer free photos and artwork; in some search engines, you can set a filter to show only images that are free to re-use. You may want to invest in an image editor, so that you can resize, crop, recolor, merge, or otherwise process images to fit your needs. And again, make sure that you publish credits for the people who have provided you with any free images you use.

• Promote Your Content

A billboard doesn’t pay its way if no one drives by it, and content you publish is not useful if no one knows it exists. To get the most out of your publishing efforts, you need to build awareness of your content, and one of the best ways to do this by announcing it on social media.

When you publish an article, write up a short abstract with appropriate hashtags and a link to the article, and post it on social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Share the post with relevant interest groups, which can help you target your content toward people who will likely have interest in it. Engage in conversations with people who Like or comment on your posting, which will further increase visibility of your article.

Look for opportunities to cross-promote your articles, by providing links within each article to other relevant articles you have written.

If appropriate, mention your article when commenting on articles published by others, but be discreet—readers do not appreciate promotion that is more for the benefit of the promoter than for the benefit of the community.

What Knowledge Will You Share?

By now, I hope that you have been persuaded that publishing your knowledge is a worthy endeavor, and that you now have some clear ideas about how you’ll do it. Remember, knowledge locked up in your head serves no one; its value increases the more you share it, and you stand to profit more by sharing it than hoarding it.

If I have inspired you to start publishing, please point me to your articles—I’d love to see them!

Jim Schibler leads product management teams that deliver software experiences customers love, and he coaches professionals on job search and career management. He writes on a broad range of topics; see more of his articles at his website.

Image credits: Intellectual Property courtesy Nick Youngson @ Blue Diamond Gallery; Famous icon courtesy Priyanka @ thenounproject.com; NitaFarahany at TED courtesy Ryan Lash; blog illustration courtesy needpix.com; networking conversation courtesy GreenTech Media; Gift courtesy asenat29 at flickr.com; Opportunity courtesy Nick Youngson @ picpedia.com; Refusing Woman courtesy piqsels.com; Writing courtesy pxfuel.com; Laptop user with ideas courtesy pikrepo.com; WordPress Blog Post courtesy Needpix.com; Insert menu and megaphone courtesy Wikimedia commons; Share icon courtesy GoodFreeArt @ OpenClipArt.org.

Copyright © 2020 Jim Schibler — All rights reserved