Writing Without Street Cred

If you want to have any hope of being recognized for your writing, speaking, or blogging, you have to have credibility. Most overestimate their credibility and it shows in the way they write and speak. It will be hard for readers to take you seriously without credibility.

People with street cred - high levels of trustworthiness and recognized expertise – have luxuries not afforded to everyone else. They can voice unsubstantiated predictions and statements that are usually accepted at face value. People without credibility must work much harder to be taken seriously.

Some of my writing I can produce with a lot of credibility. Other areas, not so much. Here are ways I’ve found to increase my street cred in those areas where I’m still a little weak.

Use Facts and Figures

Observations are fine, but too many people rely solely on observational data. Anyone who has taken remedial science knows that observations alone don’t translate into facts. Even if your opinions and observations are 100 percent on the mark, if you have little credibility most will have questions. The last thing you want as a writer or blogger is to try and make a point when everyone is stuck questioning the premise of your argument.

Until you’ve become a recognized expert – and even after – it’s important to back up your opinions with facts, figures, and sources. Even though I have a considerable amount of credibility with federal college financing, I still use use as many facts and figures as I can when I do interviews with The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

Be Transparent

If your readers or listeners don’t trust you, forget it. I knew a prominent reporter who had a lot of credibility, until he ditched his job to work for a “nonpartisan think-tank” (which is code for “highly partisan, unaccountable loony-bin”). His credibility plummeted. It wasn’t the job-switch that hurt him; it was the drastic, vindictive, over-the-top writing at his new job that ruined his credibility. He can no longer be counted on as a valid source of credible information.

Transparency is the answer.

Never blog or write anonymously and always be open and honest about your credentials, even if they’re limited or nonexistent. If you give stock advice but work at McDonalds, disclose it, and follow up with why what you’re saying is valid. Don’t try to fool your readers or listeners because once they feel betrayed they will never come back… there’s just too many alternatives.

Rely on Others

Interview others who are already recognized as experts. If you want to be taken seriously as a writer, you’ll need to tap other’s expertise. (Most credible publications will want at least two to three quotes from industry experts anyway.)

Besides, some of the very best advice I’ve received as a writer came from interviewing industry experts. After my formal interviews, I ask my interviewees for specific pieces of advice just for me. Some of my questions have been: “How do I get published?” “What should I be investing in now?” “Where do you see this industry heading in the next few years?”

The answers to these questions rarely make it into my interviews, they’re just for me.

Build Your Reputation

Titles used to bestow credibility. Gen Y has watched the President be wrong on WMDs, CEOs convince shareholders that a company is stable right up until the floor falls out, and athletes and fitness gurus give training advice, all the while doping themselves to high heaven.

Titles have become less important. Reputations are more important than titles. Titles give a level of expectation about expertise, but whether a person can deliver that level of expertise is completely independent of the title.

Between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who are you most likely to believe when they both say their companies are about to deliver something innovate? They’re both CEOs (although Gates recently stepped down). The difference is that Jobs has a track record of delivering innovative products while Gates has a track record of delivering… well… Vista. Even if Microsoft is really doing innovative stuff, their reputation makes them seem old, out of style, and ill equipped to release products on-time and in a workable condition.

Reputations outlast titles and they can’t be gained overnight. Writers and bloggers who gain good reputations over time build their own credibility, and then they can call themselves whatever they want.