Posted by If you want to be a successful marketer, you must focus on creating quality content.
The truth is, if you don’t have good content, you won’t get good results.
However, most of the content on the internet does not provide any value. They are boring, poorly written, and most importantly, not SEO-friendly.
The point is that your content needs to cut through all this “noise” if you want to get your message heard. So, if you’re serious about improving your marketing skills or just getting started — this post is for you.
This blog post will share 11 of the critical skills you need to develop to become a successful Content Marketer.
By combining all these content marketing skills, you will be able to turn your ordinary content into creative and shareable content, which will help you get better website traffic and increase your sales.
Top 11 Content Marketing Skills You Need To Master
Here are the 11 content marketing skills you need to master to capture better SEO results.
1. Copywriting Skills
Copywriting is one of the essential skills you need to master as a content marketer.
Copywriting is a skill that anyone can learn and improve with the right tools and techniques at their disposal.
Copywriters are generally responsible for creating engaging content that sells products or services. It’s not just about writing, though; copywriters need to know how to write well and position their writing to resonate with their audience.
The best way to become a great copywriter is to practice as much as possible. Here are some tips on how you can improve your copywriting skills:
a. Know your audience
The first step in writing a good copy is knowing who you’re writing for. Next, you need to understand your customers’ needs, desires, fears, and problems before you can try to sell them anything.
Once you know what motivates your customers, it’s easy to find the right words to appeal to them and make your product stand out.
For example, a site that runs discounts and coupon codes should know that its audience wants to save money. So, the site’s copy should focus on how the products can help customers save money rather than on the product’s features.
b. Read as much as you can
If you want to learn how to write better, reading other people’s work is a good start.
The more you read, the better writer you’ll become — especially if you’re reading works by other successful writers doing things differently than everyone else in their field or industry.
c. Make sure your content is clear and concise.
Your copy should be easy to read and understand. Use short sentences and paragraphs, and avoid long sentences with multiple clauses.
Also, keep them brief and direct so that readers don’t get confused or lose interest in what they’re reading.
d. Practice writing on your blog or website
To become a better writer, you need to practice writing, whether on your blog, e-course, or social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
You can also try writing fiction stories and nonfiction articles; both will improve your skills as a writer over time.
e. Write about topics that interest you the most.
If you’re writing about something you’re passionate about, the process will become much easier for you than if it’s something tedious.
When you care about what you’re writing about, it shows in your work and makes everything more interesting for readers.
2. SEO Skills
SEO is a crucial aspect of content marketing. It helps you rank your content on search engines and drive more traffic to your website.
Having SEO skills means knowing how search engines work and what factors they consider while ranking websites. This includes keyword research, link building, rank tracking, technical optimization, etc.
The good news is that there are plenty of free resources available online that can help you learn SEO skills. Here are some of my favorites:
a. Google Webmaster Guidelines — Google’s official guidebook for optimizing websites for search engines.
b. Moz’s blog — Moz’s blog is one of the most comprehensive SEO blogs in the industry. They cover everything from technical SEO to content strategy to link building.
c. Search Engine Land — Search Engine Land is one of the most popular resources for search engine news, tips, and advice. The site was founded in 2004 and today has a registered readership of over 1 million people per month.
3. Project Management
It’s impossible to be a good content marketer without being good at project management. The content marketing process is a project, and every piece of content needs to go through it.
(Source: xibms)
You can’t just write the first thing that comes to mind and hope it’ll be good enough. Instead, you need to brainstorm ideas, test them with your audience, write them up, and publish them.
Project management skills include:
a. Time management: Knowing how long something will take and when it should be finished.
b. Resource management: Making sure you have all the resources you need (people, equipment, etc.) to complete a task.
c. Prioritization: Prioritizing tasks to be completed in priority order (not necessarily chronologically).
To make things easier, you can use project management software that helps you track, organize, and prioritize all of your tasks.
4. Video Production and Editing
Like it or not, most people are visual learners. They’re more likely to remember what they see than what they hear.
So if you want your content to get noticed, you need to include a video component in your content marketing strategy.
The first step is producing a good video. It doesn’t have to be professionally produced, but it should be straightforward to understand.
Shoot the video in front of a whiteboard or wall so you can easily edit out any mistakes or edits later on.
Alternatively, you could use a video from a webinar session to illustrate your content. Most webinar platforms record the webinar video automatically so that you can export and trim it.
Once you’ve created the video, the next step is editing it down into an engaging piece that tells your story and engages viewers.
Having some basic video editing skills comes in handy because it’s much easier to fix mistakes if you know how than having to start from scratch again.
5. Content Promotion Skills
Content promotion is another essential skill you need to master to succeed with content marketing.
Content promotion is the process of getting your content in front of more people so it can make a more significant impact. It’s not just about the number of views your content gets; it’s about getting people to interact with it and share it.
Through content promotion, you can promote any content, whether it’s a blog post, video, podcast, or something else. The most common types of content promoted are blog posts and videos, but you can also use social media to promote other types of content.
However, it isn’t something that happens overnight — it takes time, effort, and dedication. But once you have a solid strategy in place, you’ll start seeing results very quickly.
Here are some essential tips for effective content promotion:
a. Use your social media pages
Social media can effectively promote content because it’s easy for people to share on their pages and networks. So if you want to reach as many people as possible, this is an option worth exploring.
However, it would be a great idea to schedule your posts in advance so that they get sharted automatically at the right time.
For this, you can use Crowdfireapp. Crowdfire is a powerful social media management and scheduling tool.
It allows you to schedule posts across multiple social media accounts and tracks your competitors’ performance on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
b. Email your subscribers
Building an email list or newsletter subscribers to email them about new posts will help drive traffic back to your site. Also, when you send emails to your subscribers, make sure you include links back to your site so they can view all of your content.
c. Add engaging images
Images are one of the most important aspects of content promotion — if your readers see something interesting in their feeds or inboxes, they’re more likely to click through and read what you have to say (or at least skim it).
d. Create a hook that grabs their attention
Give readers a reason to click on your content by creating an engaging headline that will cause them to take notice.
This could be provocative like “How I Lost 20 Pounds Without Exercise” or something that inspires curiosity like “5 Easy Ways to Make Money Online, “ which will raise customer engagement.
e. Include user-generated content
People are more likely to engage with posts when they feel like they’re part of the conversation.
One way to accomplish this is by including user-generated content in your posts — photos, videos, reviews, and comments from users who have interacted with your brand before.
6. Storytelling
Storytelling is one of the best content marketing skills you can master.
It’s not just about telling stories, though — it’s about telling them in a way that makes people care about your brand and want to engage with it.
A story has three parts: conflict, resolution, and lesson. When writing content for your business, you need to ensure that it has all three of these elements.
Let’s say you work at a company that sells home security systems. You might want to write a blog post called “The Time My House Got Robbed.”
The conflict would be the robbery itself; the resolution would be how you were able to resolve it. Finally, the lesson would be how important it is to invest in home security systems so this doesn’t happen again.
7. Editing Skills
Editing is a critical skill for any content marketer. Professionals who edit their work are more likely to produce quality content because they will be able to identify mistakes and fix them.
As a content marketer, it’s crucial to spot grammar, punctuation, spelling, and overall style errors.
If your content isn’t well written, people won’t want to read it. And if readers don’t want to read your content, then there’s no point in wasting your time creating it in the first place!
Here are some great editing tips to improve your writing:
a. Read it out loud
When you read your writing aloud, you hear the words differently.
You can see where things sound awkward, or you might have repeated yourself. You can also notice when you’re not being clear.
If you’re not sure what I mean, try reading this article aloud to yourself and see if it makes sense.
b. Edit line-by-line
Writing is very different from talking, so we often forget to connect our thoughts in a logical order when we’re writing.
When I edit my work, I like to edit line-by-line instead of word-by-word because it helps me see what’s going on with each sentence individually before moving on to the next one.
c. Use writing tools
Many online tools can help edit your writing — from Grammarly (a freemium tool that checks spelling and grammar) to Hemingway App (which highlights passive voice).
These tools can make your editing process easier and faster because they take away some guesswork involved in finding mistakes in your writing.
Additionally, you can use AI writing software to make your writing process faster by eliminating writer’s block and increasing productivity.
d. Use the active voice
Beginners often overuse the passive voice. The passive voice tends to be wordy and indirect. It also makes it harder for readers to follow what’s happening in the sentence.
On the other hand, the active voice is the preferred way to write in English because it makes your sentences straightforward. It’s also more concise, making your writing more efficient and easier to read.
e. Break up long sentences
Long sentences are hard to read because they’re difficult to follow. They also tend to be wordy and repetitive. To improve your writing, break up long sentences into two shorter ones.
8. Graphic Design
To create great content, you need to be able to communicate with visuals too. That’s why graphic design is one of the most critical skills for content marketers.
However, if you don’t have graphic design skills, plenty of free tools are available that allow you to create your graphics, or you could hire a professional to create custom illustrations or pretty art.
You can also find stock images online if you don’t want to create your graphics from scratch.
9. Collaboration Skills
Collaboration skills are vital for becoming a great content marketer, but they aren’t something that most people learn overnight.
To be an effective collaborator, you need to learn to communicate clearly and understand what others are saying in return. This can take time and practice, especially if you’re new, but it’ll become second nature once you get the hang of it.
Collaboration can also mean working with people outside your company or organization who have different skills than yours.
For example, if your business does not have a graphic designer but needs images for blog posts or social media posts, you will need someone who has those skill sets.
10. Time Management and Organizational Skills
If you want your content marketing strategy to be effective, you need to manage your time and keep organized effectively.
This is especially true if you are managing multiple projects or working on several pieces of content at once.
The best way to manage your time is by setting up a calendar and schedule when you will complete each task. If possible, block out times for reading, researching, and writing so that you can focus on one thing at a time.
It’s also important to stay organized, as this will help ensure that all of your projects stay on track.
You could use an online calendar like Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook for this purpose or even create a spreadsheet with all of your deadlines in one place.
11. Research and Data Analysis
Research is the backbone of any content marketing strategy. The more you know about your audience, behavior, and needs, the better you can tailor your content to them.
But research doesn’t just mean reading articles or books. You need to understand how people use the internet to solve their problems, find information and make decisions.
You also need to analyze the data you gather through site analytics and other tools that can help you understand how people are interacting with your content.
If you want to make sure that your content is compelling and reaches the right people, there are tools available that can help. Here are some of them.
a. Google Analytics
This is one of the most popular analytics platforms and provides insight into how visitors interact with your website. For example, you can track traffic sources, see where people are coming from, what they’re looking at on your site, etc.
b. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo helps you discover trending topics in your industry by analyzing social media data from multiple sources. You can search for specific keywords or browse their archive of hundreds of millions of articles and posts from across the web.
BuzzSumo also makes it easy to analyze competitor content by filtering results by domain authority or number of shares on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
c. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a free online tool for content marketing. This tool lets you know what keyword is searched most and how much you need to pay on Google AdWords.
It also allows you to see the estimated cost per click (CPC) and average search volume.
These insights will help you choose keywords and make effective ad campaigns.
Wrapping Up
As you already know, content marketing is the key to attracting new customers, growing and maintaining a customer base, and boosting sales. It’s a powerful tool that can help you build your business and establish yourself as an expert in your field.
But, if you’re new to content marketing, it can be a bit overwhelming to start.
But don’t worry! Content marketing is a learnable skill that anyone can pick up and master. And the good thing about this skill is that it is a continuous process.
And by following the tips and suggestions I have provided above, you will be able to write engaging and shareable articles that attract readers.