The Multifaceted Writer: Writing Vertically and Horizontally

In what ways should you think about marketing your work while writing? To what degree should you think about how what you write connects with the rest of your portfolio or is representative of the topic about which you are writing?

The world of new media brings with it a host of acronyms, tools, and other mysteries, many of which are useful for writers. In soliciting advice on setting up my blog and then website, many sources have told me of the benefits of new media tools, such as SEOs (Search Engine Optimizers), keywords, links, and other various forms of tagging, which are necessary and important tools for any writer looking to author content for the web.

While I do not deny the power and importance of these tools, as a writer with a new business, it is dizzying to think that I’m supposed to be doubly (as in two times over) conscious of the full proportions of writing, i.e. its vertical and horizontal components.

In the marketing world, vertical marketing refers to targeting professionals in specific industries, such as health/wellness providers or educational publishers, whereas horizontal marketing is distinguished by the identification of a target audience that shares characteristics across industries, such as copyeditors or human resource professionals.

For the web, vertical and horizontal marketing are powerful concepts due to the diverse, worldwide audience who now have access to an almost endless amount of knowledge as well as to the ease of locating and tracking information.  All of this is important for writers because it is now possible to get a quick snapshot of ideas that are of common interest to people across different walks of life in comparison with concepts that appeal to a more niche audience.

Yet, normal writing has vertical and horizontal components, anyway. The vertical dimension of writing refers to the degree to which your writing has a consistent style, theme, or feel to other work that you have done. With a blog, this would be the dimension by which you should try to write your entries in a style similar to other entries.

By corollary, the horizontal component of writing refers to how something you write on a topic links to or compares to other work on the same topic. This concept exemplifies the urgency within any writing to be authentic and accurate by citing and sourcing information to back up what you say.

But putting a two-dimensional article on a website with the capability of linking your writing not only to other things that you have written but also to other sources or other writers’ work establishes a complex linguistic and informational matrix with endless creative and stylistic opportunities.

The flexibility of new media content is, of course, exciting, particularly from a business development perspective. Yet, I find it overwhelming at times when writing articles for the web to maintain focus on my topic while making sure that I include enough links, photos, and other elements to keep my readers interested. Did I forget a link? Is what I’m writing accessible? Did I forget to source anything? Does this blog entry have a consistent “voice” with other entries on my site?

As I briefly mentioned in last week’s column, part of the impetus of my new company is to provide clients with relevant, research-based content and to help them to design workable communications and marketing strategies for building their respective brands.

I always tell clients that effective communication boils down to three steps: first, you need a singular concept or vision; second, you must have a sustainable strategic plan for communicating your message; and third, you should apply the principles of good writing to your message by articulating what you say in clear, well-written language that is appropriate for your target audience.

Unfortunately, this means that when writing for the web, a writer or company wanting to establish a unique brand presence needs to be highly conscious of the degree to which his or her writing or web site has internal consistency, parallels or excels the quality of work by competitors, and reflects the general standard for web content across industries.

Obviously, this multi-dimensionality to writing is equally true for print publications. Yet, the ease of web search functions means that readers are able to gauge your work much more quickly in comparison with that of other writers and are possibly twice as critical in forming an opinion about what you write due to the glut of information now available on most topics.

As a result, I am constantly anxious about my own blog, its style, and its readership. I started my blog as an experiment to see if I could garner interest in an essay-driven site that covers a variety of subjects from the arts to literature and education. However, I quickly realized that my chosen topics were too diffuse, an approach that likely would confuse—and thus turn away—readers. This realization threw me into a bit of a blog crisis, which didn’t help since, as I mentioned in my last column, I was already wondering about the utility of keeping this blog in the face of my growing need for a company website.

So, thinking of the vertical and horizontal dimensions of writing, how do you make your work topical, market it to your desired audience, and maintain your own style at the same time?
For me, the solution was a matter of focus. To resolve my blog crisis, I decided to follow my own advice and devised a blog plan. Keeping up with current trends and researching other sites, I now am trying to focus my writing on a core of arts, lifestyle, and literary topics, which builds upon entries that I like and points me in the direction of my goal of an arts and culture magazine.
Now, how to make sense of this blog in context of the wider work of my writing-related business….

Jessica Quillin owns Quillin Consulting, LLC, a consultancy in Washington, DC, focused on content development, research, and strategy for the public and private sectors. She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Cambridge.