How to become a Content Marketer? [10 qualities you need to master and how]

You are one of the individuals who want to start exploring Content Marketing. You are on the right path. It is becoming an unavoidable discipline and necessary for any business that aims to have a claim in the digital world.

As a simple concept as it is, people are using it more and more every day. A stat offered by Elite Marketer says that 70% of companies are using Content Marketing as part of their strategy and 78% of these companies have 1 to 3 Content Marketing Specialist on their team. And obviously individuals are being good at Content Marketing, so you have to step up your game in order to benefit from it.

That’s why you need to analyze and master the traits I’m suggesting here.

Here are 10 qualities you need to have in order to create awesome content.

1.The ability to know your audience’s needs

We’ve all been there before. You spend days of your time writing a great piece of content, that you believe will drive success. Then, for some reason, it falls flat. Few people read it, and even those who do, don’t seem terribly interested in engaging with your business. What’s wrong? What happened?

More often than not, the problem is a disconnect between you and your audience. When a piece of writing or any type of content fails to resonate, it’s usually because it’s not what the audience was looking for.

This is a fundamental part of marketing your business – before you can deliver a marketing message effectively, you need to know whom you’re delivering it to and why.

How will you manage to know more about your audience?

Marketing Land offers seven things you need to do, in order to find more information about your audience. These tips include:

1. Doing your research in advance
2. Look at your competitors
3. Create a customer persona
4. Get to know your clients personally
5. Monitor reader comments and engagements
6. Witness external social habits
7. Conduct surveys.

If you want to expand more on these steps you can visit Marketing Land article.

2.The ability to tell a Story

Well, don’t freak out if you think you are not a good writer or creator. We are not looking for the next Dreiser here. The truth is we all know how to tell a story and we do it everyday. Digital writing is no different. You need to answer the questions people might be interested in and the best way to do that is in a chronological way that they best understand.

Don’t understand Storytelling only as a blog or a piece of the novel. Nowadays, storytelling is more in the form of videos and visuals and brand building. You see every day successful campaigns by Coca Cola or Dove for example. They are able to tell e story through less than a 2-minute video and impact millions.

Every story has 3 basic elements:

1.     Characters

2.     Conflict

3.     Solution

Characters

A story could be written in the first person (I), second person (you) and third person (he/she). Think about the characters of this piece you’re reading. They’re you and it’s written for you and always referring back to you.

Conflict

The conflict is the problem or issues characters face. This could be a question, a uncertainty as far as it is something that needs to be solved. In this part, the conflict is that You – the characters are looking for traits to be a good content marketer and is presented at the beginning of this article.

Solution

We need to solve the conflict, to put a conclusion, and in this case, we are giving you some features that will help you succeed.

And we have a story where you don’t need writing experience, you just need to speak the language of the audience and want to help them.

How will you develop this skill?

I recommend going straight to the literature. Two books I would highly recommend to start are Storynomics and Business Storytelling for Dummies because these books really helped me out develop this skill.

Don’t want to spend? You have unlimited resources online such as Hubspot Ultimate Guide and plenty others that will be a good way to give you an overview of how important it is and then you might find other related resources from them.

3.The ability to Analyze

The ability to convert numbers to insights and quality decisions is a must in the digital world.

A good Content Marketer not only writes but is able to read the response audience gives him/her. For every piece of content, you publish the audience will react in various ways. Therefore, you should be able to measure, understand, and adapt to this reaction to create more and more powerful writings in the future.

You will need to master Google Analytics and other site measure Tools like Hubspot, but tools only won’t do the job if you don’t know how to take the message they give to you.

So how do you become more analytical?

You have met some people that see things in movies or books no one sees and wondered. Well, it might be that the person is more intelligent or experienced in the field.

However, most of the time these people concentrate on some of the areas that have a huge contribution in developing these skills.

They may read more frequently, listen to a podcast, play brain games, take online courses, learn new things everyday, ask questions, or observe. All of these are expanded in this article by Career Addict.

4.The quality of a Strategic thinker

Fifty-six percent of B2B marketers do not have a documented content marketing strategy, and this is a problem. Content marketers must have a strategy in place to produce cohesive and actionable content. The perfect content marketer has a list of several goals and ensures every piece of content drives towards that goal. Some examples of goals include:

• Increase site traffic, brand awareness or lead generation
• Educate prospects on your industry or product benefits
• Improve search engine optimization or customer service
• Build customer trust, rapport, loyalty, or industry credibility

Your content also should be analyzed and repurposed during the time. Also, you should know the Buyer’s Journey and the stage of the Funnel your buyer persona is. The reason anyone would go and create something is that one has goals to accomplish. Thus, having a set of clearly defined goals helps tremendously your success.

5.The willingness to Collaborate

One thing is for sure. You will have a tough time producing good results alone. In this part, the digital world is the same as the offline one. You need people and to have more of them by your side, you need to be communicative, likable, and helpful at times. These are skills you learn by repeating, so put an effort to use them more often.

Why do I need this quality so much?

1.     You work in an organization and you need to communicate and align with the team for success

2.     You work alone; you need people to share and help you make your content visible. It will be a hard time starting out if you don’t have support from any influencer.

How to be Collaborative?

 The Balanced Careers offers a great article on what needs to be done so that you be a more cooperative person in a group and have better results. 

6.The ability to Create and Imagine

Ideas are the products of the imagination, so the most successful content marketers position themselves (and their organizations) as idea factories.

They aim to create better content that’s creative and imaginative, using storytelling elements that leave a lasting impact on the customer as well as the industry.

It’s easy to come up with grandiose ideas. But why, when it comes down to it, are many of these ideas so difficult to execute? The answer is simple. To make truly creative marketing content and campaigns, we must focus on the process rather than the end result.

Creativity is more an exercise game and the more you practice, the better you get. So...

How do you develop creativity?

People have written many books about enhancing this skill, as usual, I will recommend two books: The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry and The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp. There’s also a great article about this by Content Marketing Institute to start with.

7.The Will to Persist

“Will-power and desire, when properly combined, make an irresistible pair.” Napoleon Hill

Without a doubt, the biggest reason why a content program does not succeed is that it stops. I’ve seen brand after brand starts a blog or an e-newsletter or a video series or a podcast series and stop after just months. Content marketing is a war of attrition. It’s a process. Success does not happen overnight.

One has to be patient and concentrate on the final goal. Most importantly enjoy the process.

Conclusion

You might think that these are too much to do; however, they are all things that can be done with practice and persistence over time. 

If you focus on improving these qualities while staying value and customer-focused, you’re certain to find success with your content marketing.

Start from the one that is your weakness and refer back to a thin article to find the next after you master it. If you believe you mastered each than you are great to go, but don’t forget there’s always room for improvement.

Go and create!