Opinion pieces

What an opinion piece is

An opinion piece is a short signed article that states one position and defends it, published under the name of the person who holds it. Six hundred to a thousand words, one argument, no survey of the field. The reader should be able to say what you think in a single sentence after reading it, and should be able to disagree with that sentence.

That last part is the whole service. If nobody who reads the piece could reasonably hold the opposite view, the piece told people what they already believed, and they will forget both the article and the firm that published it. A position everyone shares is not a position. It was not worth the afternoon it took, and it was certainly not worth paying for.

It is not a full thought leadership article, which is longer and built on a body of evidence from your own work. An opinion piece can run on one good argument and one example. It is shorter, sharper, and more likely to get a reply.

When you need one

You need one when you are tired of watching the wrong practice sell. Most owners hold two or three views like this: about how their trade quotes, or cuts corners, or talks to customers. The view comes out at association meetings and never gets written down, and meanwhile the opposite view is on everybody's website.

You also need one when everything you publish reads as reasonable and nothing is remembered. A site of balanced, helpful, entirely agreeable articles gives a buyer no reason to prefer you to the next firm with balanced, helpful, entirely agreeable articles.

You do not need one if the honest answer is that you do not mind either way. Manufactured contrarianism reads as manufactured, and it is worse than silence. If the aim is simply to be useful rather than to take a side, a how-to guide will do more for you and will be linked to for years. And if the firm does not yet agree internally on what it stands for, settle that with a positioning statement first, because the piece will read exactly as unsettled as the firm is.

What goes in it

• The position, in the first paragraph. One sentence, unhedged, with no "it depends" in front of it.
• Who it costs you. Named in the planning, not in the article: which readers, suppliers or peers will dislike this, and whether you can afford that. If nobody appears on this list, we have not found a real opinion yet.
• The best case for the other side. Stated fairly enough that somebody who holds it would recognise it, then answered. A piece that ignores the objection reads as advertising.
• What convinced you. Two or three things you have seen in your own work, concrete enough to be checked. Opinion without experience behind it is just volume.
• What you are not saying. An explicit boundary. Most of the trouble opinion pieces cause comes from readers extending an argument further than the author meant it to go.

What you get

The line, in writing. Before any drafting, a short note stating how far this piece goes: practices criticised but no firm named; a named competitor; or a named individual, which I will not write. That note is agreed by you and it governs the draft, so nothing arrives that you have to be talked out of at the last minute.

The article. Six hundred to a thousand words in a shared document you own, with headline, title and meta description, and two rounds of revisions. The first draft of an opinion piece always produces one "I would never say that" and one "actually, go further." Both are useful and both are expected.

Replies, prepared. Three or four short answers to the disagreements the piece is most likely to attract, written at the same time, so you are not composing a defence in public on a Friday afternoon.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. The owner of a seven-person residential electrical contractor in Nova Scotia believes that free estimates are dishonest in her trade: that a proper estimate takes two hours on site and that the firms giving them away are recovering that time inside the job, which the customer pays for without seeing it.

Before drafting, the line is agreed: practices named, no firm named, no reference to any local competitor by any description a reader could decode. The defence check is applied and she passes it, because she charges for estimates herself, has done for four years, and can show what the fee covers. The piece runs to 820 words. It states the position in the first line, gives the strongest counter-argument fairly, and answers it with three jobs where a free estimate missed a panel problem that surfaced after the walls were closed. It ends by telling homeowners to ask any contractor how long they intend to spend on site before quoting. She loses one referral relationship over it. Two of the three prepared replies go unused, because most of the disagreement arrives by email rather than in public.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you think, who disagrees, and whether you have ever said it out loud to somebody who disagreed. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. One piece or a run of them, with revision rounds stated.
3. The line, agreed. The three levels above, chosen and written down before drafting, along with the names and relationships that are off limits.
4. The defence check. Three questions, answered on a call: would you say this to the face of the person it criticises; can you show what convinced you; and would it still be true if your own business changed size tomorrow. A position that fails any of the three gets reworked or dropped, and I will tell you which.
5. The argument call. Forty minutes, recorded, in which I argue the other side as well as I can and you answer. That recording is the raw material.
6. The draft, seven working days later, with your read and revisions after it. Nothing is published without your approval in writing.

What it costs

Opinion pieces are quoted as a fixed price after the half-hour call, because they vary more than most pieces: some need an afternoon, and some need the argument call, a second look at the evidence and a careful read for anything legally rash before they go out. Everything is in CAD, fixed in writing before the argument call is booked. The pricing page shows the four ways of working here.

What happens next

An opinion that lands tends to produce three things. Replies, which are the material for the next piece and often better than the first one. A demand for the evidence, which is where measuring it yourself becomes worth the effort. And a steady stream of short arguments, which is one point at a time on social, where most of the disagreement will actually happen. None of that is assumed. One piece is a complete job, and it is entirely reasonable to publish it and stop.