How to Become a Columnist

Everyone has passions and opinions that they like to share with others. If you've always dreamed of taking your chatter beyond the office water cooler -- and maybe even getting paid for it -- the time has never been better to identify a target audience and start writing your own column.

Things You'll Need

• Imagination
• Paper
• Pen/Pencil
• Computer
• Internet access
• Magazines/newspapers

Instructions

Finding a Need and Filling It

1. Make a list of all the topics you know best. These can be favorite hobbies, travels, professional expertise derived from various jobs you've held, team sports you like to follow, pet care, or even how-to tips for throwing great parties or feeding your family on a budget. We can all learn from one another and chances are that you're conversant in things that other people would like to hear about.

2. Categorize each topic on your list as "Education", "Entertainment", "Inspiration", or "Self-Help". Education topics are those that teach people how to do something new and/or improve upon an existing skill they may already have. Entertainment topics are those that put a fun spin on popular activities such as going to the movies and sports events, reading books, discovering new restaurants, or hearing amusing stories. Inspiration topics are those that provide uplifting words of comfort and encouragement to readers going through challenging times; they may also include retrospectives about earlier centuries and how the individuals who lived during these periods endured hardships and setbacks. Self-Help topics focus on advice and cover the broad spectrum of dating, marriage, divorce, parenting, self-esteem, exercise/diet, beauty, and personal empowerment.

3. Jot down your qualifications to write about each topic. Whether you begin your career as a columnist by blogging on the Internet or you decide to pitch your column idea directly to a newspaper or trade magazine, it's important that readers recognize you as an expert. Someone who works as a personal trainer, for instance, will be perceived by readers as speaking with more authority than someone who only goes to a neighborhood gym once a week. A writer who has explored the four corners of the world will be more credible than someone who hasn't trekked any further than the library or across a living room to turn on the Travel Channel. And would you really take relationship advice about how to save your marriage from a person who has been divorced six times? Not surprisingly, Entertainment topics are often the hardest when it comes to validating one's personal expertise. The reason is that these topics are not only subjective in nature but also revolve around leisure pursuits as opposed to activities we label "work". In the heady world of syndication, these are hard for newcomers to break into unless they have a unique viewpoint that no one else has thought of.

4. Study the competition for the topics you most want to write about. Whether their forum is the newspaper, a magazine or an online publication, familiarize yourself with the way they "talk" to their readers. Most of these are conversational in tone and read as if they're sitting across a table, sharing a cup of coffee, and chatting about bird feeders, sharing a recipe, or discussing the latest politics. Study the entire publication to glean a sense of who its target market is and what needs/interests aren't currently being met. For instance, a weekly newspaper's demographic may be families with young children and yet there aren't any existing columns about family-friendly eateries, day-trips with kids, or interviews with local babysitters. On the flip-side, you wouldn't pitch a series to this publication about jet-setter vacations or how to refurbish a sea-worthy yacht because that's just not in the range of their attention span, time or household budget.

5. Test the waters by blogging. There is no shortage of opportunity on the Internet these days to express yourself via your own website or creative channels such as American Chronicle, Gather, BookSpoke, NovelSpot, or a multitude of others. Invite reader feedback as this will help you gauge how effectively your message is being received. Over time, this will help you develop a following. Many a successful entrepreneur or book author began in this very way!

6. Prepare sample columns for submission to your target publication along with an introductory cover letter explaining your background and how your proposal addresses their editorial vision. (The more you've studied the publication, the better your chances of breaking in.) These samples should be 3-5 short pieces that offer variety and yet establish the voice and tone that will prevail in future columns. While the pay may not be high to start out, the clips you acquire and the reputation you build as a reliable and readable columnist can be the stepping stone to bigger opportunities.

Tips & Warnings

• A short column (250-500) words has a much better chance of being accepted than a lengthy one. Print publications often find themselves with holes to fill and will welcome the consistency of short pieces. In the electronic market, there is always a need for fresh content. Establish a relationship with some of your favorite publications by submitting sample articles on a regular basis. If they are already familiar with your work, it will be easier to win them over with the idea of a new column.

• If your column is going to take the form of Q&A's from readers, an insider tip is to manufacture fictitious letters for your sample columns. An associate of mine who is a therapist prepared several of these as a demonstration of the kind of questions she was skilled at answering. These also helped to get the ball rolling with real readers once her column was accepted and she became a regular feature.

• If you start a blog on your website, establish a regular posting schedule for it that you can easily accommodate. Many a blogger has started out with an ambitious plan to write something new and exciting every day but then gets bogged down with other things. Before they know it, weeks or perhaps even months have elapsed. If visitors to your site can't count on you to entertain or inform them on a consistent basis, they're going to wander off and simply not come back. This can be compared to "floating" TV shows which initially attract an audience but then get moved too often - or periodically disappear altogether - that they never have a chance to become prime time hits.

Resources

• Gather.com
• BookSpoke
• NovelSpot
• American Chronicle