If you want to understand what a content writer does, you first have to understand the importance of online content. Gone are the days where companies relied on brick-and-mortar stores, services over telephone and physical points of sale to make a profit. In the electronic age, where over 13% of total retail sales in the United States in 2020 came from online commerce (also called electronic commerce, or e-commerce), companies rely on their content to provide an edge over competitors. With so much available in terms of online shopping and shipping, businesses need a way to stand out from one another; They also need reasons for customers to keep coming back to their site and stay interested in their goods and services. Since consumers in this digital age are often interested in more than a simple purchase, companies often rely on content creators to provide this advantage on their websites.
Content Creation
Note that not all content is made up of words; creative content creators may write, but they may also create graphics or videos, design polls or quizzes, write scripts for speeches and recordings or provide structure for podcasts. All of these count as content that can be valuable to both consumers and companies. The advantages of being a content writer specifically, include the number of invisible tools they use to help make an article or blog post even more valuable to the business.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is the process of using specific approaches to make a webpage appear more attractive to search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. A writer must understand how search engines find the pages they suggest to the searcher, and then use this to make their written content more attractive to search engines. As we all know, if we’re looking for something on the internet, we rarely travel to the second page, let alone the fifteenth; A better search engine response means more potential customers will see the page.
Keywords: Keywords are important phrases often used by individuals when using search engines; Written content containing prominent keywords helps that page achieve a higher search engine ranking. Keywords can be clumsy, so it’s important to understand how to work phrases into a piece that reads well while also suiting the way search engines act.
Research Links: While a good content writer researches every topic they write about, the best looks for good sources that will support the statistics and statements they make in any piece of content. Besides, connecting websites with links can help build the profile of a page, which can lead to more traffic.
What Does a Content Writer Do?
With all of that in mind, according to Scripted, a content writer’s job might seem simple: creating content which first attracts potential customers, then describing to them the value inherent in this particular product or service, with an end goal of convincing customers to engage with the product in question. That’s a lot of words to say, “write an article,” but that’s because the content writer’s job is far more complicated than that!
Firstly, content writing needs to be good. Quality writing, paired with proper spelling and grammar that’s easy to understand and engaging to read is the writer’s primary goal. Most content writers end up learning a number of styles of writing; The charismatic, enthusiastic voice we might use to write a blog post is very different from the technical style often used for white papers, press releases or other formal documents. Written content can’t be full of long-winded phrases or purple prose, but it also can’t be short and direct to the point of being boring; It needs to be able to engage a diverse array of users.
Content writing also needs to be accurate. Content writers need to know what they’re talking about; This means either specializing in areas of expertise or being willing to put in valuable research time before an article. Writers who simply throw ideas on the page or make up facts can get their clients in trouble and won’t make it very far; However, well-researched content has a very high value on the market.
Content writing must also be creative. On an internet that pushes out millions of blog posts daily, there needs to be a reason someone will choose your words. This should be a combination of style, accuracy, and approach. If you write something that’s no different than a thousand other available pieces, don’t expect to be ranked any higher than those other thousand articles. If you can write something with a genuinely interesting approach – one that provides a read that users won’t find elsewhere –they’re more likely to engage with that content, which is good for you and your client.
A content writer must combine these three critical skills and align them with the SEO tools listed above. This can be difficult to do – imagine you’re assigned an article about cats, and one of your keywords is “fluffy cat grey Maine coon or Norwegian?” This isn’t a full sentence, and thus it can’t actually appear as-is in any kind of article following the rules of the American English language. A good writer will judge the rest of the article and know how to change this into “Is my fluffy grey cat a Maine coon or a Norwegian forest cat?”, or “Maine Coon vs Norwegian: Fluffy Cat Identification.” For some, this sounds frustrating; For content writers, this is one of the fun challenges of the work. Looking for a creative content company? Reach out to us today for creative SEO solutions.