In today’s digital age we are creating a new world, where your talent and creativity is no longer associated with or dependent on your college degree.
More roles are being created with a different skill set requirement that today’s education system is incapable of imparting to the students. If we look at the facts, the work readiness of college graduates is not up to the mark and fewer employers trust the work readiness of these graduates.
Today, self-built skills are more necessary and even employers like Google, IBM, Tesla, Apple and even Bank of America are joining the suit of companies that do not screen candidates based on their degree. You can have a great job with a college degree or a debt.
While we are not going to tell you how to choose a career path, but if you want to break into the Content Marketing Industry, then we can help. In this article, we are about to share 5 skills to build to make a career as a content marketer.
- Start with understanding Brand Strategy
No one is going to hire you until you have an understanding of the mechanics of content marketing. This is why you have to understand what is under the hood. Content strategy is an industry that’s merely 10 years old, still, it has its foundational techniques based on the techniques that are hundreds of years old.
For learning brand strategy, you need to know about the six core concepts.
- Know how to define content strategy and what parts it includes.
- Know your audience, and build a brand differentiation factor
- Learn how to find great keywords
- Learn to build authority with a dedicated brand website over time
- Know how to create optimized awesome content
- Manage your content with a process and system in place
These steps aren’t light and you will have to work a lot harder than you think. But, if you are serious about getting into the content marketing industry, you have to learn about content strategy. Rather than learning on your own, you can also choose to take a course by an industry practitioner or an internship where you can learn these skills in real-time is also advisable.
- An Understanding of SEO
More brands and marketers are turning to SEO, their move is justified:
For most sites, 90% of their US traffic comes from Google either through Google Search, Google Images or Google Maps.
Compared to organic social media SEO drives 11X more traffic
68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine.
Inbound SEO content is important as online searches are surging. In 2020, Google witnessed a double-digit rise in searches per day in one mine. During the pandemic period, starting from March 2020, Google search traffic went from 3.6 billion searches/day to 6 billion searches/day.
Simply put it means that more people are using Google than ever before for answers to their questions. SEO is a must-possess skill to learn in 2021 if you want to enter into content marketing. We have a lot of resources in our SEO blog section.
Companies who are hiring content marketers are looking for people who have an understanding of SEO. You have to build your knowledge in this area. Find SEO experts to follow and take courses that are rated high. Investment in learning SEO will be totally worth it.
- Knowledge of great online content
With so much content already on the internet and millions of new pieces published every day, how do you know what great content looks like?
If you want to survive in the content marketing industry for long, you have to sharpen your skills to recognize quality content. Do not expect your clients to be lenient with the kind of content they expect you to produce. It’s not like a college assignment, but more of a curriculum.
You have to learn to identify good content across all the formats including webpages, social media posts, meta content, blogs, product descriptions, lead generation content, video scripts and whitepapers, to name a few.
Irrespective of the industry, these formats are widely used for a wide variety of content marketing campaigns.
Don’t hesitate if you already don’t have good content recognition skills. Best way to build such a skill is by interning at a content agency. You can also try courses that have content writing as the main subject.
- Nurture the ability to research deeply
There was a time when you can rank by creating simple content with sourced statistics. Today, you need to invest more and research deeply to find the original sources and ensure that you are not linking to anything outdated.
If you are picking studies and research data from 2018 for a post today, most probably it is outdated data and will not add any authority to the content. The difference between great content and just content arises from finding great sources and statistics. If you have the skills to research deeper than an average person, you will find yourself creating authoritative content.
Authority content is a requirement now as today trust is one of the most important buying factors that consumers consider when purchasing from a brand.
- Ability to persevere
If you nurture a simple skill of sticking with it or commitment, then you have a chance to not just survive but also thrive in the content marketing industry. According to Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, “it takes 12-18 months to see content success”.
He attributes a major reason for the failure of a brand’s content marketing strategy is the inability of the brand to be patient enough to see the campaign through.
We know it sounds simple, but it is not that obvious. If you are heading into the content marketing industry, this is a fact that you must be aware of. Building trust factor and authority is hard work and involves a high degree of persistence. How long you can stay on track tenaciously will define your success here.
Conclusion
Content marketing industry is a booming one. With the value of data surpassing the value of oil, content is the most expensive asset of today’s digital world.
Do not expect that you will be able to naturally embrace the industry as you will be required to have certain skills. Here are the five extremely important content marketing skills you must master.
