5 Golden Rules for Creating Content in an Unfamiliar Domain

There’s always excitement in exploring the unknown. It’s what has fuelled innumerable human endeavours from deep-sea diving to space exploration to foodies trying out new restaurants! But with that excitement also comes the fear of the unknown. And it’s that fear and anxiety that many content creators feel when they are faced with the task of writing for a domain that they know little or nothing about.

Mark Twain’s old adage to ‘‘write what you know’’ is all very well, but it’s of little help to the professional content writer/marketer/communicator. When you create content for a paycheck, you usually don’t have much of a choice about your subject matter. This especially holds true if you are a freelance consultant, work in an agency of some sort, or create marketing content for an organisation with clients or interests in multiple domains. In these cases, you’re simply compelled to ‘‘write what you don’t know’’.

So how do you do that? Well, I can say from experience that it can be a difficult task, but certainly not an impossible one. Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time creating content related to subject areas I knew very little about to begin with, ranging from FinTech, to AdTech, to health & lifestyle, to artificial intelligence, and more. I can’t say I’ve ‘‘cracked the code’’ and found some sure-shot formula to conquer the unknown. But I have found a few ways to confront or get around the challenges of creating content for an industry or subject area that I’m not very familiar with. And that’s what I’ll be sharing in this piece.

Without further ado, here are my five ‘‘Golden Rules’’ for creating content in an unfamiliar domain:

Rule No. 1: Be a sponge

The fundamental function of a sponge is to absorb. And that’s what you need to do. Absorb. A lot.

This is indeed the primary rule, the foundation on which most of my other rules are based. It’s simple enough - if you don’t know much about a domain that you need to write for, you need to learn as much as possible, and as soon as possible. You need to keep your eyes and ears open to any and all information about your target domain - actively or passively, online or offline, while at work and outside of work. The idea is to immerse yourself in the domain - to understand its terminology and jargon, the key topics and big issues related to it, and above all, how things work within it.

So read articles (reliable, fact-based ones of course!), talk to colleagues and other experts, read books, watch documentaries, videos and news stories - do whatever it takes to fill your mind and memory with raw information about the target domain.?

Of course, the big caveat here is that the more effective a sponge you are, the more you need to filter. It’s crucial to ensure that the information you are collecting is accurate and timely (the latter is particularly important in rapidly evolving sectors where a lot changes every year, or even every few months). But the good news is that the more you expose yourself to information, the better you become at staying up to date, and at verifying what’s true through multiple sources, while identifying and casting out inaccuracies and misinformation.

The most important part, as you gather information, is to internalise it, reflect on it, and ultimately gain an understanding of the domain. You may have access to your information sources at all times during your content creation process, but understanding the domain yourself will make the process a lot more easier, and make the end-result feel a lot more authentic. Or, in other words, it’s easier to convince your audience when you are convinced yourself!

Rule No. 2: Read. Read. Read.

This is really a subset of the previous rule, but something that I feel is important enough to deserve special emphasis. Of all the many ways you can absorb information about a new domain (including conversations with experts, watching videos/documentaries, hearing podcasts etc.), reading is probably one of the most crucial ones.?

Reading, when done right, is an activity that inherently requires absolute focus on the subject matter. When you read about a new domain, you’re forced to concentrate on the facts and reasoning being shared. While reading, you also have time to reflect on the information you’re absorbing, which facilitates better understanding.?

Another reason why it’s important to read a lot about the target domain actually dates back to school! As kids, we were encouraged to develop a reading habit because, among other things, it develops our language and comprehension skills, enabling us to become better writers and communicators. The same basic principle applies here - the more you read about a new domain, the better you become at writing and communicating about that domain.

Which is not to say that the purpose of reading domain-related content is to simply replicate (or outright plagiarise) that content for your own work. But before you learn to make your own special sandwich, you need to learn the basics of assembling a sandwich. Likewise, before you set out to write a blog-post or a whitepaper about a new subject you should, well, read a blog post-post or whitepaper about that subject!

Rule No. 3: Talk to the experts

To put it crudely, sometimes it’s better to get information ‘‘straight from the horse’s mouth’’, as the old adage goes.

This rule admittedly isn’t as easy to follow as the previous one, since it’s dependent on your access to experts in the target domain. But if it’s possible to tick this off your checklist, you really should. If you’re part of an organisation that’s in the domain or connected to the domain, this should be easy enough - there will be any number of your own colleagues, clients, contacts, consultants etc. whom you could have a conversation with. If you have friends, family or professional/academic contacts in the target domain, that could be a great help too. If you’re in a position to attend industry events and forums, that’s another opportunity to interact with subject matter experts.

Talking to a flesh-and-blood expert can give you a broader perspective on the domain beyond what you could get by simply consuming existing content. Someone who actually works in the domain is likely to not only be intimately familiar with it, but possibly even learns something new about it everyday - working knowledge which you can now share in. You can get a much better understanding of the practical applications (and implications) of domain-specific concepts and ideas you might have read about from someone who has to get their hands dirty implementing those concepts and ideas in the ‘real-world’. And even if your domain expert’s knowledge is largely theoretical (for instance, if they’re a researcher, analyst or academician), it is still likely to be vastly superior to yours, so it’s a win-win for you in any case.

Rule No. 4: Review & edit content

When you’re in an organisation that works in the target domain, and/or creates a lot of content in that domain, there’s a pretty good chance you might be asked to ‘‘take a look’’ at content created by others and make edits and suggestions if required. While this can admittedly sometimes get tedious, it’s a great way to enhance your own ability to generate content in the domain.

I have written extensively about the process of editing and reviewing in a previous article, which you can check out here. Suffice to say, it is a process which requires you to examine content from multiple perspectives - that of a subject-matter expert as well as the target audience. It also requires you to go through the content with the proverbial ‘‘fine-toothed comb’’, to look for both factual and grammatical errors, and to generally ensure that it makes sense to its intended consumers.?

By going through this process over and over again, you get a better understanding and appreciation of how to create good content in the domain, and the pitfalls to avoid to ensure that you won’t create bad content. Moreover, checking the work of others reinforces, and may even expand, your own nascent knowledge of the domain.?

Of course, to be a good reviewer or editor of content, you do need some basic knowledge of the domain to begin with, so I wouldn’t recommend relying on this particular approach if you haven’t already started following the other rules!

Rule No. 5: Leverage your 'outsider' status

The Japanese martial art of Jiu Jitsu has one core philosophy - use your opponent’s own force against them.?

Now martial arts and content creation may seem like galaxies apart, but there’s a lot to be said for this philosophy in the context of the problem we’re addressing in this article. Think of your lack of familiarity with the target domain as your opponent on the battlefield. Now you can attack your opponent directly through improving your knowledge about the domain by following the rules I’ve outlined, thus making it less ‘unfamiliar’. And you should. But what you should also do, taking a leaf out of the Jiu Jitsu playbook, is to turn your opponent’s force against them i.e. to turn your unfamiliarity with the domain into a strength.

One of the primary goals of content marketing is to educate target audiences about the domain. So it’s fair to say that in many cases, they aren’t necessarily a lot more familiar with it than you are. This gives you a unique opportunity to be a ‘bridge’ between two worlds - the domain-experts of your organisation/client, and their target audience. You can make the domain more accessible to your fellow ‘outsiders’ by absorbing ‘insider’ knowledge, understanding it, and then presenting it in a clear, simple and engaging manner through your content.

In a way that’s what all marketing and communications professionals do - act as a bridge. What I’ve described just gives you a chance to do it in a very direct way, at an individual level.

Beyond the practical benefits of this approach, another major advantage is that it can be very empowering to you. Instead of fretting about the challenges of creating content for an unfamiliar domain, think positively about how you can make the domain less unfamiliar for yourself, so that you can then do the same for others!

The gist of it

We started by talking about the fear of the unknown. The five rules that I’ve discussed in this piece are ultimately about replacing that fear with the excitement of discovery - for yourself and eventually for the audiences that you will engage with your content.

And who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be able to bring that same energy to other endeavours. Deep-sea diving perhaps!