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There’s no doubt that content marketing is becoming more and more relevant in the digital marketing scene. Bloggers, brands, marketing agencies, and website owners are realizing how important content marketing is to the growth of their businesses (and those of their clients).
However, the pace of change in digital and content marketing is unprecedented. We see new content marketing strategies and trends seamlessly improve or even replace the old ones every year. It’s not an easy task to keep up with all these changes. To stay relevant, content marketers will need to continually learn new skills to master the art of content marketing.
If you want to be a successful content marketer in 2024, you’ll need to acquire these skills. But don’t worry! This guide will cover every skill you need to master to win the content marketing game, so keep on reading!
List out 11 most Essential Content Marketer Skills
SEO and Topic Research Skills
According to Ahrefs, effective search engine optimization (SEO) can drive even 1000% more traffic than organic social media strategies. What’s more, 67% of digital marketers think that SEO is the most effective content marketing strategy. So it’s no wonder that mastering SEO and topic research skills is a must to get your content noticed by your target audience.
Knowing how to conduct research around trending topics will help you make your content as relevant as possible for your audience.
And if you want your content to land on the first page of Google search results, you need a strong grasp of SEO best practices.
Just remember that content marketing SEO takes time, and your posts won’t show up on the first page of Google immediately! As a blogger, we can tell you that some of my blog articles have taken several months to show up in Google search results. So be patient!
Strategic Planning Skills
Content marketing is not just about creating content but creating content that has a direct impact on your business goals. This goes beyond simply increasing the number of followers or views you receive. You need to know how the content you create ties back to the overall business goals you have set for yourself or your clients.
Before you start executing your content marketing efforts, you need to have a solid plan. This is where many marketers fail. They spend all their time creating content but don’t take the time required to craft or maintain their content strategy. The Content Marketing Institute found that only 44% of marketers have a documented content strategy.
So, you need to learn how to plan your content strategically. Putting out content without an effective content marketing strategy may get you more followers or views.
But, it certainly won’t help you grow your business.
Copywriting and Content Creation Skills
The importance of content creation can’t be understated. Good content can drive traffic and engage audiences, and bad content will turn them away. To improve your copywriting and content creation skills, try the following practices:
- Learn to create different types of content. Your content can come in many forms, such as photos, videos, blog posts, or infographics. According to Hubspot, the video was the main content form that marketers used in their content marketing strategies in 2021 – and it’ll probably stay that way in 2024.
- Learn how to repurpose content. You can use the content you’ve already produced and post it on different platforms in different formats. Make sure to optimize it for each platform separately – don’t just copy and paste the link!
- Learn the basics of copywriting. The average copy won’t cut it if you want your content to stand out and grab people’s attention. What will cut through is copywriting that is persuasive, meaningful, and tailored to your audience.
If you’re a content marketing manager, a broad knowledge of best practices in content creation will help you guide your team to develop compelling content. And if you’re creating content for your business yourself, learning how to write effective copy and create engaging forms of content will help you drive more traffic and generate more sales for your business.
Writing and Editing Skills
You’ve probably heard it said that “content is king” in today’s online world. But if your content isn’t clear, well-written, and persuasively compelling, then it’s just dead weight that drags down your SEO efforts and hurts your brand.
Many business owners don’t realize that something as simple as proofreading and editing can make a huge difference between an average piece of content and a great piece of content.
According to Semrush, 55% of content marketers claim that their most successful content marketing tactic was focusing on improving the quality of their content. But if that doesn’t convince you, here are a few reasons why you should master proofreading and editing skills as a content marketer (or hire a professional proofreader and editor):
- A well-written piece of content inspires trust, while poorly written content with grammar and spelling mistakes will take away your credibility
- A well-written piece of content allows for the best possible reading experience for your audience
- Editing your content after it’s been written can help you improve it in terms of flow and style.
- Editing can also help you adjust your content pieces to fit your brand voice and resonate with your audience.
Content Analytics and Tracking Skills
So, you came up with your content strategy, and you’re regularly creating content for all your marketing channels. Now what? How can you tell if your content is performing well and in line with your business goals?
That’s where your content analysis and tracking skills come in. Content analysis is the process of reviewing a piece of content to determine if it’s doing its job. Analyzing your content can help you understand what types of content are doing well and which are not.
Content analysis consists of three steps:
- Identify the goals of your content
- Review the content to determine if it’s accomplishing those goals
- Determine how it could be improved in the future
To help you with that, you need to learn how to monitor and analyze different metrics, such as your conversion rate. These metrics give you clear data-driven insights into what is and isn’t working with your content marketing efforts so that you can adjust accordingly. There are many content marketing tools that help you manage and monitor your content effectively.
Storytelling Skills
One of the most important skills for content creators and content marketers is the ability to tell a good story.
Why? Because storytelling is why people will want to read your article, watch your video, or listen to your podcast. And it’s also the reason why people will remember you and share your content.
Storytelling is a powerful tool for communicating ideas. A good story can captivate us and help us explore new ideas, empathize with characters, and experience different emotions.
When you tell a story — especially one that’s interesting, entertaining, or relatable — you’re able to engage your audience at a whole new level and create deeper connections between them and your brand. As a result, they are more likely to interact with your content and even buy from you.
In fact, an article from Search Engine Watch claims that storytelling can even help you boost your conversion rate by 30%!
Project Management Skills
In the realm of content marketing, it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day tasks. The average content marketer wears many hats and, as a result, has a lot on their plate. That’s why it’s important to master project management skills as a content marketer.
Project management is the practice of managing all of the tasks that go into completing a project. These tasks include assigning roles to each team member, scheduling the work in progress, and ensuring milestones are met. Also, good team building activities is achieved by project managers that help teams succeed.
Project management takes time and practice, but the good news is that there are a few tips you can use to master project management skills as a content marketer.
- Use the right project management tools.
- Learn to prioritize tasks.
- Have an effective content plan in place.
- Delegate tasks effectively to your team members if you have any.
Data Analysis Skills
As a content marketer, you’re always looking for ways to improve your content marketing results. So you try out different types of content and different content distribution strategies, hoping that something will stick and bring new business to your company.
This is why it’s vital to master data analysis skills. If you know how to gather the correct data to analyze how your content is doing, you’ll be able to improve it and eventually achieve the desired results.
Here are three reasons why you should learn how to analyze data for content marketing:
- Get to know your audience better: Data analysis helps you get to know your audience better, which means you can create content that resonates with them.
- Get better results from paid ads: If you run paid ads in addition to your organic content promotion methods, data analysis will help you make better decisions, such as which audiences to target, what types of creatives perform best, and more.
- Improve your content: Gathering and analyzing data about your content pieces can help you see what’s working and what’s not – so that you can continue to improve your content.
Collaboration Skills
Collaboration skills are a must for content marketers. And that’s because the nature of content marketing — and its success — relies on more than just one person.
The best content marketing campaigns are usually the result of many people brainstorming different ideas, working together to create the content, and staying on track with a strategic plan.
Content marketing touches so many different departments, and we’re often asked to work with other teams within our organization. Plus, sometimes, you may need to collaborate with other content creators or social media influencers to achieve your content marketing goals. If you’re an introvert, who likes to go solo, learning how to work with others can take some time and effort!
But whether you’re a solo content marketer or manage a content team, collaboration is an essential skill to master.
Here are some ideas for how you can work better with others:
- Focus on the goals of the project first.
- Work alongside your teammates, not just for them.
- Get to know your team members and their strengths and weaknesses.
- Encourage brainstorming sessions and idea-sharing whenever possible.
Content Promotion Skills
Even though you’re creating and curating high-quality content, there’s no guarantee it will be seen by the right audience. In fact, creating great content is just half the battle. The other half is about knowing how to promote that content to reach a wide audience and drive engagement.
Content promotion is about taking a piece of content and getting it in front of the right audience at the right time to get as much engagement as possible.
This should be one of your top priorities as a content marketer. The reason is simple: if people never see your content, it doesn’t matter how good it is.
As a blogger and content marketer, we can confirm that. Whenever we make an effort to strategically promote a specific piece of content, it receives more engagement than my other pieces of content.
Technical Skills
Content marketers are usually writers and storytellers at heart and know how to start a blog successfully, but their writing alone isn’t enough to succeed in their roles. Content marketers need a wide range of technical skills to help them execute their content marketing strategy.
These skills include:
- Graphic design: If you’re putting out infographics or any other form of content that requires designing something, you need to learn how to design.
- Video editing: If videos are your main form of content, you’ll need to master the basics of video editing.
- Social media management: As a content marketer, you need to know how to manage different marketing channels.
- SEO: To effectively distribute your content, you need to understand how search engines work and how to optimize your content for SEO.
- Marketing automation: Learning how to set up automated email marketing campaigns and automate your social media posting schedule will help you save time and effort.
Conclusion
Content marketing is a rapidly developing field, and the skills that content marketers need to master are changing as fast as the field itself. If you want to survive in the content marketing world, you must adapt to those changes.
In this article, we’ve provided you with a list of 11 skills that fall under the umbrella of content marketing. Now, you can start mastering each of them to improve your content and grow your business eventually. We wish you luck!
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