Specialist or Generalist? How to Choose the Freelance Path for You.

Photo Credit: piccadillywilson

Is it better to be a copywriting specialist or a generalist? Should you do one thing very well, or be a jack of all trades?

Today’s the day that all-around copywriter Peter Bowerman, and white paper expert Michael Stelzner will go head to head on that topic in an online debate.

I predict the debate will conclude that choosing to be a generalist or a specialist is a matter of personal preference. (If the conversation continues beyond that, I predict it’ll focus on how to pitch the path you’ve chosen.)

So, let me begin where I think today’s debate will end:

You choose your path, and then your marketing strategy, not the other way around.

Archilochus, the old soldier poet from ancient Greece once said:

“The fox knows many things, and the hedgehog knows one big thing. But they both gotta hustle if they expect breakfast.”

Okay, I may be paraphrasing that a bit. The point is you can choose to be a fox or a hedgehog, but without clients you can’t eat. Either way you go, you need to communicate what value your services return.

The hedgehog
A specialty makes it easier for prospective clients to find you – in fact, they’re already looking for you. They’ve already decided they need to outsource a white paper or case study. Or they need someone intimately familiar with their particular industry or market.

They’re not quibbling over whether they should hire a writer. They’re actively searching for the best writer in the niche.

The trade-off for specialists is often geographic. Although their target market is actively searching for their services, it’s a smaller market than what generalists enjoy. So, specialists need to build visibility and credibility where their market congregates.

Luckily every market congregates on the internet. So, pitching a specialty through SEO tools is an easy approach. Launching a blog is a little more challenging, but it builds credibility. Specialists reaching for the brass ring will find the time do speaking engagements, or publish a book on their area of expertise.

The fox
Generalists have to hustle more, a lot more. They can solve a wider range of copy-related problems, but fewer businesses are looking for them. So, raising visibility isn’t as critically important as building trust.

The hard reality generalists need to accept is the market doesn’t particularly value how well they write. Unemployed staff writers and journalists are flooding the freelance market. Meanwhile, websites like oDesk.com and Elance.com are awarding assignments to low bidding writers, and writing shops in Asia are underpricing even them.

The market perceives generalists as a commodity, and prices them accordingly.

So, generalists who hope to survive and thrive are wiser to avoid piecework, and instead build and maintain strong relationships. Finding sustainable work as a generalist is an inside job, gained by referrals from past clients and through word of mouth.

The majority of businesses out there don’t intuit the value of good copy, much less the value of outsourcing it to a freelancer. So generalists need to get close to their prospects and listen. They need to be able to identify business problems that good content can solve. They need to have a realistic idea of how better copy can solve it. And they must be able to make a compelling case for the value of their solution.

Freelancing is a business, and keeping a business is hard enough in a good economy. Whether you choose to be a fox or a hedgehog matters less than how intelligently you market what you do, and how passionate you are about what you write.