Good riddance to the plaid jacket salespeople and cold calls of yesteryear. The Internet has completely changed how people shop and what they expect from people who want their business. While a “buy it now” copywriting style certainly has its place, people prefer content marketing content to fill their days, educate them and help them explore their buying options.
To this end, each day, they watch 5 billion videos. They view 3-4 pieces of content before buying and they engage with the brands they love on social media.
But will just any kind of content creation do? Millions of blog posts, videos and other media get uploaded everyday. Most never get seen.
Just check out some of the obscure videos on YouTube – 3 views, 1 like from the digital content creator.
No, it takes a special someone to become a content marketing copywriter. You need a certain set of skills and some talent to go with it. If you’re asking how to become a content creator in 2019, check out these 7 habits every content marketing creator should master.
1. Stay Informed in Your Industry
Many people believe that only true creativity is completely original and comes from nothing. But the successful digital content creator knows better. Every discovery, great movie idea or invention in history is built upon things that came before. Content that exists in a vacuum can never connect with the audience.
You need to be aware of what your audience is talking about, searching for and not finding. Find out the hot topics. See what’s already out there. Know your competition.
Then, as a content creator, let that flow of information guide you as you create something even better. If you want to know, “what does a content creator do?”, it’s 80% input and 20% output.
This isn’t inefficiency. It’s the creative process.
2. Don’t Isolate
When you think of the best inventors in the world, you may think of people who spend endless hours in a lab, forcing their eyes open as they continue their quest. But some of the best creators of all time, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, John O’Sullivan, the Australian astronomer who brought the world WiFi recognised the importance of living life to keep creative juices flowing.
Explore your world. Expose yourself to new ideas. Look at what other industries are doing. Not only does this help a digital content creator stay out of a rut, it provides constant input that your brand uses to synthesise new ideas.
3. Know Your Audience
Who are they? Where are they in life? What are their challenges? What factors build trust with them? Most content creation in modern times is a friendly conversation. And you can’t have a conversation with someone if you don’t know who they are.
Start by building a buyer persona. To whatever extent possible, create this persona based upon real data about your best customers. Write it out. Each piece of content speaks with one of these personas.
4. Have a Personality
News flash! A million digital content creators are out there trying to do the same thing you are. How do you differentiate? The best copywriter develops a unique voice and personality to connect with an audience. This personality becomes an important part of a business’s brand.
But here’s the catch. Having the same voice across brands may actually work to your detriment. If you’re doing the content creation for multiple businesses, you don’t want to seem like a one trick pony.
Hone your copywriting voice. But be flexible as you grow into a successful digital content creator. Learn how to blend a new client’s style guide into your own style while still meeting their style guide needs.
No one is saying that it’s easy. But successful content marketing copywriters do it well.
5. Curate and Add Value
Okay, we’ll state the obvious. There’s a lot of content out there. And it’s not all rubbish. Actually, a lot of it is really good. How can a new content marketing copywriter possibly compete?
While it’s important that curation not be your entire strategy, curation of some of the great content out there is a great way to leverage what’s already valuable and popular for your brand.
Here are just a few ways to do that.
- Collect studies around a single topic, explaining them in everyday terms and expounding on them.
- Gather statistics on a topic. Organise them in a helpful way. Build a blog post out of them.to take this a step further, add commentary and analysis for the reader. Offer actionable tips.
- Solicit user-generated content (USG). Encourage your social media followers to become your digital content creator. Give them a theme and a hashtag. Share them on your own profile. Offer a prize for the best one.
- Curate tweets and retweet with a new headline, giving credit back to the original author.
- Create best of videos or blog posts. “12 Best Must-Click Headlines”. “15 examples of effective email copywriting”.
6. Set Some Goals
If you’re creating content for someone else, you need to know what they want to achieve. If you’re responsible for setting those KPIs, then make sure you write them down and track your content’s performance. Remember, every blog post is not a direct sales piece. Consider the buyer’s journey through various forms of content and track the performance so you can continually improve.
7. Make it Actionable
People who are looking for content want to walk away changed in some way. They should have a completely new understanding or be able to do something they couldn’t do before. The change doesn’t have to be dramatic. But it should leave a person feeling that there’s something here. And they want more of it.
If you ask a successful content marketing copywriter, “what does a content creator do?”, they’ll tell you. It’s not just about this one piece of content. It all works together. What you do here determines whether they ever consume another piece of your content again. Make it worth their while and they’ll keep coming back for more.
How to Become a Content Creator & Find Success
To become a successful content marketing copywriter, stay informed about your industry, but don’t be afraid to explore others. Know your audience and set some clear goals. Realise that every piece of content creation is a part of the whole. To learn more about how to become a content creator, follow our blog.
