Your Content Career Guide
If you love to write, you have the power to become a successful, lucrative content specialist. Follow along Content Land’s guide to develop high paid content skills and grow a happy career.
We’re here to help all types of writers:
Copywriters looking to grow into a strategic role
Content specialists working towards career advancement
Anyone making a career switch to content
Here is your full guide from writing beginner to advanced strategist (with plenty of free resources along the way).
Feel confident in your decision to grow a content career
If you’ve started a career in content, or are looking to make the transition, you’re in luck. Content career options are growing rapidly for several reasons:
Google’s SEO algorithm is increasingly focused on content quality.
Even if you don’t get rankings, social media creates opportunities to put your content in front of an audience.
Even with AI options, businesses need someone to input ideas and refine what it produces. Who is creating ChatGPT content marketing prompts?
If you’re using an outsourced freelance model - a content specialist needs to manage and assign the work.
When ads are saturated, companies turn to inbound marketing to diversify and build on evergreen tactics. Inbound marketing is powered by content.
B2B SaaS and eCommerce content strategy are essential. These companies are constantly hiring for content positions to compete with each other’s strategy.
Additionally, content opportunities are becoming lucrative. According to ZipRecruiter, Content Strategist salaries are up to $112,000. And all of the top paid marketing jobs (such as Search Engineer and Digital Consultant) list content strategy as a top responsibility.
Best of all, you can leverage content skills to pivot into new roles as you wish. For instance, learning to convert buyers from content is a sales skill. Content strategists can easily switch into sales, SEO, product marketing, and consulting opportunities.
Land your content marketing job
Landing a content marketing job is strongly tied to your portfolio. That’s good news - you will truly be judged by the quality of your work over interview skills.
Once you’re happy with your content website; tailor your resume and cover letter, continue learning and building your skillset, and interview.
Think of interviews as a learning opportunity. What skills and bodies of work do they ask you about? Develop the skills that companies are asking you to demonstrate.
Your full breakdown of how to get into content marketing.
5 Content skills that will advance your career
To advance your writing career, focus on an in-demand content skill set. Here are some recommended skills and resources to support you.
1. Learn content planning
Creating quarterly content calendars is part of leading a team of writers. It’s also an important way to keep yourself organized.
Develop content planning expertise:
2. Learn content strategy
Content strategy goes beyond your plan of content work. It involves leveraging research to allocate resources and determine risk. What is the best way to leverage resources to achieve your goal? In which channels should you invest?
Develop content strategy expertise:
3. Learn search engine optimization (SEO)
When content ranks on Google, it becomes a valuable tool to drive revenue. Learn how to write content that attracts (and converts) organic traffic and watch your career change.
Develop SEO expertise:
4. Learn marketing messaging
Marketing messaging is the specific wording used to talk about products. Your messaging should be documented in an organized, systematic way to communicate product value.
To decide how to describe products, an important first step is defining persona pain points and your products’ features and benefits.
Develop marketing messaging expertise:
5. Learn how to work with AI
While AI should not be used to write content for you - it can help in several scenarios. For example, rely on ChatGPT to help with writers block, draft summaries and conclusions, and craft engaging social media posts or headlines.
Finding AI tools that can facilitate your writing operation is impressive to companies that value efficiency and automation.
Boost productivity and streamline your days
Content specialists are researchers, creators, and organizers. Your career happiness is closely tied to how productive you feel and the quality of work you produce.
Follow these resources to get into a productive rhythm:
Measure the success of your content efforts
If you spend your days producing content for other teams, you might feel like more of a copywriter than a specialist. Start measuring success to prove your value and advocate for yourself.
Here are some ways you can do so:
Sales performance: How often is the sales team leveraging your blogs, PDFs, or other content in their communication? Can you match any revenue to your content in this way?
Organic traffic: How much organic traffic does your content generate? Can you break it down by the buyer journey as well (awareness, decision, conversion)? For instance, a let’s say your awareness content generated a 12% increase in organic traffic. Clearly, your efforts are generating some buzz.
UX metrics: Track how people engage with your content to measure quality. Engagement metrics include bounce rate, scroll depth, and pageviews per session.
New and returning visitors: Content that generates new visitors is catering to product awareness. And if your content has a high number of returning visitors, it means that people find your other content valuable enough to return.
Conversions: Most content should include some sort of call to action - like a whitepaper, free trial, or some sort of further reading. Tracking these conversions shows how valuable your content is in generating leads and revenue.
Ready to become an advanced content marketer?
No matter where you are in your content career journey, there’s always room to grow and improve. Content Land is here to guide you through your career and offer some new templates, perspectives, and strategies.
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