“I wish to pursue a career as a freelance writer, but I don’t know where to start. I have some experience in b2b content marketing, but that’s about it. How can I boost my content writing skills to produce great content which will help me grow in this field?”
Why Content Marketing?
Are you passionate about writing and want to turn this hobby into a career? Are you tired of taking content writing and SEO classes from all the different places, but it just doesn’t seem to work? Is the traffic on your website still low, or your clients still unhappy? There is a high possibility that this happened because you were only focused on writing the content and not marketing it.
Hmm, what does this mean?
All you cared about was using SEO strategies, placing keywords in your article in ways that will attract the audience. You didn’t bother learning about one of the crucial things required in this digital world – Content Marketing.
Now, what is content marketing, why you should master it, and how it will help you immensely in the long run, irrespective of how much time you have spent in this writing world – everything is in this guide.
Ok, But What Is Content Marketing?
So before we dive into all the content marketing strategies and techniques, we need to ask ourselves one question – What is Content Marketing?
You surely have heard the phrase Content Is King. Even though this phrase is overly-used, it still stands true. Content is what makes your article, blog, video what it is. The SEO techniques you use, the keywords you strategically place, the tone you go with – all these things are secondary. What you have to offer is what matters the most, and that is your content.
Give it a thought,
Without content, what would the SEOs optimize for search engines? What metadata would they hunt for, for robots like Google and Bing to rank? Every email you compose, every blog you write, every video you create, every podcast you produce is your content, and that is what should be of utmost importance before anything else.
So now,
Content Marketing is creating and publishing content for a specific audience. You know your audience so well that you produce exactly what they want and have content strategies designed specially for them. It is not searching for keywords and placing them in the headlines for the sake of it. Content marketing is much more than that.
The Better You Know Your Audience, The More They Will Like You
Even though both content writing and content marketing aimed at attracting a target audience, the latter will help you in the long run. Content writing may get your site some traffic but does not build a connection with your audience.
Content marketing, on the other hand, is about building a relationship with your readers – this makes them more interested in what you have to offer.
Maybe they will
- Share your content with their friends
- Add a comment
- Leave a like on your blog or video
All these things tell the search engines that people like your page and, this, in turn, helps you gradually go up in the search list.
Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
As much fun and easy as this sounds, remember it requires a lot of time and patience. You cannot expect to top the search ranking by writing just one article aimed at a specific group of people. You are to write and fail and then write again.
The better you connect with your audience, the more they will like your content. Why? Because you will be writing what your readers want to read. Knowing your target audience will help you write the content they need – the language you should use and even the fonts and color schemes that would attract them.
Remember You Are A Human Talking To Other Humans
Now that you know your audience, their likes and dislikes, remember that they don’t want to read something written by a robot.
Many SEO strategies fail because
- The writers focus so much on these techniques.
- They forget that they are writing for people, not the engines.
Write as if you are sitting with your readers in a cafe and talking on this topic.
Wait, but what about the keywords and stuff?
You can work on them once you finish creating your content. Run it through some tools, and add whatever words you need to. But while you write, you write what you have to say and what your audience needs to hear, not what the engines demand.
Content Marketing Is Not Just Writing
Lastly, the greatest misconception of all – that content marketing is just about writing blogs and articles. It is absolutely not true.
You can use the content marketing techniques for video, podcasts, infographics, and literally anything which provides information to a group of people.
Can I Master Content Marketing?
Absolutely yes. But can you do it without lots and lots of practice? Nope.
Only knowing the techniques of content marketing is never enough. You need to try and fail and try again and again till you master this art. You can even come up with your own marketing strategies and grow and succeed in this online realm.
Written by: – Sakshi