Become an awesome Content Writer - with these 7 skills

Content today is one of the most universal components of all businesses, whether for a start-up trying to generate demand for their product, or an MNC wanting to engage in Influencer Marketing, Content is critical to both of these. Content Writers are crucial to businesses today, and if you want to make your second career as a Content Writer, then these below are some of the skills you need
 
1# Research
A lot of business writing today is done to help potential customers get acquainted with, and make decisions about, the business that you are writing on behalf of. This means that the articles need to be well researched, weave in features and benefits and connect them to universal insights. For example, a well written article written, say, on behalf of a talent company, could start with the fact that as per a global talent report, 45% of employers find it difficult to fill roles.
A lot of this information is readily available. You, the writer, need to find it by using a bit of your imagination
 
2# Make SEO aligned
A very important reason businesses commission articles is to help make their websites and blogs better ranked on Google search. This means including keywords that potential clients are likely to be searching for. As the writer, it is your job to incorporate these keywords into the article, in a way that it does not look forced
 
3# Write on a variety of topics
As explained in the article on brushing-up your skills we posted on Tuesday, if you are able to write on a variety of topics and audiences, you will be versatile and highly employable. Today there are two kinds of writing that are most in demand
Business writing across different areas such as Education, Health, Human Resources, Financial Products & Services, Parenting, etc where companies and startups in these spaces want to create awareness and education of their areas and products
Technology writing which can cover new product launches, descriptions, benefits of new technologies, etc.
 
4# Write Engagingly
Even though many of these articles are meant for businesses to read, at the end of the day every reader is a human being, and needs to find the article interesting. That can be done on several fronts - your title needs to be compelling enough for someone to click on it, your writing overall needs to be crisp and easy to understand with a few interesting insights thrown in, and the way you format it should make it easy to read - numbering, bullet points, pulling out of key quotes or sentences and highlighting them, breaking into short easy paragraphs, etc. Keep reading and imbibing best practices from articles on the internet to teach yourself how to do this.
 
5# Take Feedback
Remember that how much ever time you have spend on writing the article, and even if you think it’s perfect, the client you are working for is the boss and you have to listen to their feedback. Do present your thinking and vision to the client, but at the end of the day the decision is theirs
 
6# Edit, edit and edit
The worst thing you can do is to write a great article, but leave a bunch of typos and mistakes all through it. Your client should have to spend any time correcting your article. However, in the first or second drafts, typos are bound to happen. So separate your focus, first attempt to write a good article and once written, get down to proofreading and editing to remove mistakes. This method ensures efficiency and accuracy.
 
7# Meet Deadlines
There is no point of writing a great article that was due day before yesterday. As a writer, your job is to deliver timely work, and you must follow client deadlines like gospel. This means having a system of your own, where you send your output to the client a couple of days before the deadline to give them time to review, feed back and for you to incorporate the feedback. Get a tool like a calendar or tracker to help you manage these deadlines better
 
We hope this was useful. There is a lot of material available on the internet on skills you need to imbibe to make you a good content writer. You can check out this or this.
 
All the best, and if you already have some work to show, start applying for content jobs today!
 
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We at FlexiBees have placed such talented career returners like you in content jobs across different specialisations like Content Strategy/Marketing, Management, Writing, etc. Go to https://jobseeker.flexibees.com/ and register with us, so we can reach out to you when we get any requirements that match your skills.