What is Content Writing: An Easy Beginner’s Guide

Due to an exponential rise in the demand for digital content, jobs like content writing was born and have gained a lot of popularity these days. Many small as well as great brands are looking forward to enlarging their visibility. To accomplish this they hire a content writer to produce content in various forms like social media, video, newspaper and more to reach a large audience. But what is actually content writing? Let’s check it in the next section

What is Content Writing?

Content writing is the process of carefully researching, planning, writing, editing and publishing content in digital form to engage, attract and retain an audience. Many people think of content writing as the art of writing articles or blog posts. But Content writing is more than that. We have social content writers, copywriters, and video script writers will let’s learn more in the next section.

Forms of Content Writing

Today’s content writing is used in the creation of content in various digital forms. Some of them include:

Blogging

Blog writing is the main content writing form these days. A blog usually helps convey information in a simple and friendly way. A blog will usually target a specific subject, for example, you could create a blog which talks about kitchen utensils or cooking recipes. This means that most of your blog content will revolve around kitchen utensils or recipes. a blog writer usually writes content in the form of an article(how-to, user guide), interviews, use cases or research. Blogging is also a good way to build organic traffic and improve brand visibility online

Social Content Writer

As the name implies, a social content writer creates and publishes a post on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Titok or Twitter. They usually plan and publish at a certain period of the day depending on some factors like active period or when are user usually active on social media and which social media is more active or content targeted users.

Copywriter

A good copywriter usually speaks both the customer’s and the brand’s language. They can produce engaging and creative work in a wide range of themes. They usually provide content for websites, media, infographics, and product descriptions.

Script Writing

A scriptwriter or screenwriter creates storylines and narrative lines for films, videos, podcasts, television shows or video games. Many brands and studios hire scriptwriters to craft their storylines and develop certain scripts to adhere to a particular theme.

Ghostwriting

A ghostwriter is someone who writes content under someone’s else name, brand group, organization or company. You could think of him as a chameleon. Ghostwriters are recognised for their voice and the provide resources to lift a company. They can produce content in many forms including white papers, ebooks, articles, website copy and more.

Email Writing

A way to convert readers to potential customers is using email. A business or company will hire an email writer to generate better engagement in their business by producing great email headlines, and content and using call-to-action words that can convert a reader to a future regular customer. Email writer usually creates newsletters, transaction emails, and campaigns.

Technical Writer

This form of content writing produces content that provides information about technical subjects or products. He is an expert with great technical knowledge regarding a specific theme. For example, a full stack developer knows how to create a web application so they can provide a technical guide on how to create a website. That’s why they produce content in the form of How-tos, guidelines, FAQs, Instructions or Manuals.

Brand Journalism

A typical storyteller. Brand Journalists focus on telling stories about a brand. They usually create brand tales, customer stories, press releases, company bios, and interviews and help in internal communication.

Other types of content writers include:

• Ad and Promo Writers
• Long-form writers

Now you may be asking why content writing is important or why should you consider a career in content writing. Well, let’s figure out some points.

Why is Content Writing Important?

The exponential growth of the internet today has powered internet-related industries to evolve. With a competitive market and products, there is a need to produce content that will outstand a brand. So content writing is one of those skills that are vital for a company or client’s business. Here are some reasons why content writing is important.

• Content writing will help build brand awareness. Producing well-written and engaging content will attract new audiences to test or even purchase a product.
• It’s essential for SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization which is a process of applying some rules to increase online visibility. It is always recommended that content writers learn SEO.
• Content writing can help you stand out from your competitors by producing high and engaging content.
• It helps establish your business. Yeah! if you regularly talk about your industry to insight, news, and ads that will leave a great impression on an audience. Producing content in many forms or platforms and regulars helps spread the good news and provide more information regarding the products you offer to your company.
• Good content will always be shared with others hence increasing visibility
• It helps you attract a new audience

Who is a Content Writer?

A content writer is someone who plans, creates, edits and publishes content in various digital forms. A good content writer knows how to adjust their tone and voice to suit a specific audience.

What does a Content Writer do?

The task of a content writer varies. Some content writers may focus on some aspect rather than another. However, the fundamental task of a content writer remains the same which is to understand the target audience of the company they are workto order to produce target content.

These are some main elements any content writer does.

Plan

A good content writer should produce a plan each time they begin a project. The plan should include which the audience target, build a content strategy, include what type of content they will be writing, which best practice to use, which keyword to use per content and any other useful information.

Write

This is the most important role of a content writer, produce high-quality text with engaging headlines. It’s the heart of the content. The volume and type of content will depend on the industry or scope of each project. You could write short-form or long-form content. Note that as a content writer, this task is time-consuming as you will think about how to combine words together to produce the right content for the right audience. So you will likely produce many versions before editing

Edition

Here content writers need to o through their work and correct any grammar errors, verify tone and voice, cross-check their work entirely and update. Usually, this task is performed by qualified editors. They verify the content and provide feedback to the writer if there is any. The writer then incorporates those feedback and notifies the editor. This process repeats until there is no more modification to incorporate. Here we say the content is ready to be published.

Publication

This is the final phase where the content is published on various platforms. For example, if it’s an article, the content writer could publish it on the company’s website or blog or even Blogger and share it on various social media platforms. However, as time passed, there may be a need to update the content to provide fresh to the audience.

How to can I become a Content Writer?

Well, this could be a very easy task, becoming a content writer. I have always thought that only born creatives could be perfect content writers. However, I see things differently today. Anyone can become a content writer it’s not as complex as some may think. Plus you don’t need a specific degree to become one besides having good writing, research and communication skills. And even if you don’t have them you could still practice and attain that goal. A good content writer should equally be creative. So how can you become a content writer? I have highlighted some points below

• If you are a total beginner, you could enrol on a course. Hotspot offer content writing courses
• Practice your writing skills. Write, write and write this will help improve your creativity and language.
• In the meanwhile build other complementary skills like SEO, the ability to adapt in a fast-growing environment, problem-solving skills
• Find your niche. Many content writers work in various domains. However, as a beginner, you need to identify your area of expertise. If it’s web development then you could start as it’s important to identify what you can do, and how you can do it before teaching someone else to do it.
• Build your experience. When a hiring manager wants to hire a content writer, they will always ask about your experience in the content writing area and your years of experience. To improve your experience, you could: create a blog and produce content regularly, be active in content platforms, create a LinkedIn Account, start hunting junior content writing jobs on platforms like Upwork, indeed, and Fiverr and build an active online portfolio.

What is the Salary of a Content Writer?

Some content writers pay lower than others however this generally depends on the experience of the content writer, the kind of company you work for, your area of expertise and the workload. Indeed.com says that a content writer earns around 19.40 per hour in the US. Also according to glassdoor, the average content writer in India earns Rs. 21,000 monthly.

However, as a content writer, you can earn a decent income of $50,000 per year or even more especially if you are a professional writer.

Should I become a Content Writer?

If you are asking yourself if you should engage in a content writing journey, I will tell you yes. As a middle schooler, I have always aspired to become a great novel writer. I even wrote a short novel back there however never got the chance to publish it. That’s how I began to write and read many novels. Today I have turned my hobby into a job and I enjoy it plus in the end, I have a decent income.

I am still about to create my novel, it’s right on the way. So if you write as a hobby, someday you could transform the hobby into a profession. And even if you don’t have any extract skills becoming a content writer is not as difficult as you may think, enroll in a course, practice, practice and practice, share your work and build complementary skills.

Top Companies for Content Writers in the US

According to indeed.com, below are the top companies that hire content writers in the US

1. DISYS $42.46 per hour
2. Freelancer.com $38.59 per hour
3. Elevate K-12 $35.80 per hour
4. Microsoft $35.16 per hour
5. Emergent Software $32.01 per hour
6. Express Writers $27.74 per hour

Final thoughts

In this guide, you learn about content writing, its importance the various type of content writing and some ideas on how to build a career as a content writer. Content writing remains one of the most demanding jobs out here as companies and industries want to build strong brand awareness to get more visibility. To get started in the content writing industry, you must improve your writing and communication skills, get much experience as possible, enlarge your network, connect with other content writers and learn marketing fundamentals.