5 Keys Skills Required to Be a Content Writer
Ollie Ander
Is probably just a couple cats in a trench-coat—the hair shedding and sunlight napping are highly suspect.
Being a professional writer has changed with the onset of the internet, and those wishing to make extra money from home are turning to content writing. Writing a novel takes time, money, and a demographic. On the other hand, everyone with a business or blog needs content, so it’s much lower risk and higher reward to be a content writer.
There are no prerequisites required to be a content writer. A diploma can help, but experience is the best teacher when it comes to online-centric careers: trends change, markets live and die by the day. Nothing will open opportunities for you as well as word-of-mouth and no textbook will help you gain an intuition for what works and what flops better than observing engagement numbers as you grow your personal portfolio of content.
That said, there are universal skills you should expect to employ and hone if you choose to pursue content writing—professionally or as a side hustle. Set your expectations straight with these 5 key content writing skills:
Time Management
If you are hired to write content for a company, they will provide a deadline by which they’d like the article delivered. Even if you choose to be a freelance content writer, you’ll still have to set deadlines for yourself to get things done in a timely manner and maintain business relationships.
Depending on the social media site you are posting content on, even if you are writing exclusively for yourself, you may need to employ time management skills to appease an algorithm. For example, YouTube rewards when creators are consistent. Make sure you are aware of how the platform you are primarily content writing for behaves, as you may have to keep up with a schedule based on that.
A good solution to stay on top of procrastination and hitting deadlines empty-handed is to batch your content: have a backlog you can release when and wherever you need it.
Formatting Prowess
Regardless of whether you are writing proper articles, you will need to familiarize yourself with the standards of content structure and flow.
Have an opening, body, and conclusion. Even if you are not writing a thesis or argument, you will still have to introduce your topic, elaborate on it, and provide value to readers. You may condense all that in a single sentence with a CTA (call to action) to something else (such as another piece of content), but any post that meanders and does not seem to have a clear purpose will be much less effective at drawing in and maintaining readers.
Practice making engaging subheadings, perfect writing concise snippets (the sentence immediately preceding a subheading that answers a question), put italics where flair is needed, and have spatial awareness of how your writing looks on the page. Gigantic blocks of text are hard to follow, so some platforms require more frequent paragraphs to manufacture white space. Always keep readability in mind.
Willingness to Research
As a content writer, there will be times you have to write about topics you are not all that familiar with. So please, don’t make it up as you go along. Jeopardizing your credibility by taking shortcuts is never worth it in the long run.
Don’t just have a "willingness" to research topics, nurture a desire to learn more. Aim to be well spoken in your writing, because readers will gravitate to your sense of authority on a topic. Have an opinion and provide your own, unique value. If all you do is regurgitate other articles, why should they bother reading yours?
Tone Matching
All forms of writing employ communication skills, but content writing can be the hardest. It’s not the same as writing in your journal or an essay for school. Not only do you need to be engaging while being informative—which is a tonal balancing act—but every job is a little different.
With repeat jobs you will acquire a voice and intuition on what the audience wants, but even that can change by the platform—by the month. Keep your communication skills sharp and stay aware of the tone required for the content you are writing.
Goal Focus
With content writing, you must remain constantly aware of your end goal: why are you writing this content, what function does it serve, what is it trying to do?
Even if you are content writing for yourself (personal brand) you need to keep your intentions front of mind or you’ll end up wasting your readers’ valuable time. This is a very "meta" thing to have to consider, but it is what sets efficient content writers above the rest.
If your content isn’t able to hook readers into performing a desired CTA or the content itself does not benefit the goal of the brand it is being written under, then you will receive less repeat interactions. Content writing needs to prompt engagement, and staying focused on an end goal will ensure that happens.
Outside of practice, all of these key skills for content writing can be supplemented with software and tools. But staying on track with deadlines and employing time management is easier said than done, so if you need help prioritizing or focusing as a newly fledged freelance content writer, you might want to check out this article on the $ best writing softwares for those with ADHD$ .
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