Every four years, Football players from various countries come to participate in FIFA WorldCup. They try to show their best and try to make their team win FIFA Worldcup. They input 100% efforts and skills that they have learned from years of practice.
There are thousands of football players in every country but only the most skilled players get the chance to play FIFA Worldcup. Only the most skilled team win the FIFA Worldcup and only the most skilled player wins the golden boot.
Same thing applies to the content marketing industry.
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There are more than thousands of content markets available only that work day and night to bring best results. Some of them are freelance bloggers and some of them are working for Fortune500 companies.
The result of so many content marketers is that every day you will see unlimited content published on various social networks.
Similar to Fifa players, only the best content marketer can stand out with his skills and knowledge.
Now you may ask that what are those skills that a content marketer needs to master.
Before you ask, here I am going to answer.
10 Content Marketing Skills You Must Master:
1) Research:
No matter you are a newbie or a professional content marketer unless you are the top subject matter expert you need to do deep research on every topic. You may find it easy to visit some popular sites to do research and get ideas about the topic you want to write about.
Read More: Data Is the Next Big Thing in Content Marketing
But if you want to be an effective content marketer then you need to go deeper in research.
Follow these tips:
- Focus on your target audience to understand what they need and what are their interests
- Discover effective distribution channels
- Understand the terminology of target audience
- Understand the keywords and queries
- Use Content Discovery platforms such as BuzzSumo
- Check link popularity using Ahrefs
- Dig deep into discussion threads, comments, and social groups.
- Identify psychographics, demographics and audience segments.
- Keep track of industry and market trends
- Determine various content markets
2) Leverage Online Threads:
You can`t just stick with one way to discover the latest trends. In every industry, you find some latest trends that impact their audience.
When it comes to grabbing the attention of your audience, you cannot stick with only trends of your industry but you should also look for the trends outside your industry that attract the audience.
Usually, newbie marketers look for latest trends to plan their strategy.
If you are the first when who is leveraging the latest industry trends, then you will grab the attention of most of the audience and easily get a chance to become a brand.
You should also focus on the related trends that are boosting engagement on social networks.
Always analyze the difference between the relevant and irrelevant trends.
I have written about "Long Tail SEO Strategy: How to target High-Quality Keywords" and the story got featured on Klinkk.com the same day.
3) Promote and distribute effectively
As a newbie content marketer you may be only focused on social promotions for new content publishing and for rest you rely on search engines.
But to grow traffic and reach you need to work on every available network that will help you to grow big.
Read More: Master Steps to Use Content Marketing For Businesses With Low Traffic
If you want to promote a video, then you should do in following way:
- Upload on YouTube
- Distribute on iTunes
- Post on related content websites
- Promote on social networks
- Cross post on Pulse, Linkedin, and medium.
4) Read Data effectively:
Storytelling is an art and if you know that it's good. But it will be greater if you know what to do with your story.
There is always a purpose behind every piece of content.
Professional content marketers understand how to analyze data to meet their goals.
You may find it hard and exhausting to analyze lots of data. You should take help of metrics. Develop an effective process for data interpreting to determine important metrics for content marketing.
Read More: How Every Businesses Can Succeed at Content Marketing
When you know how to read data, it will help you to find relevant topics and create highly engaging content.
5) Organization and Strategy:
Have you ever thought about the business plan for your blog or site?
Almost 32% content marketers have created a document of content strategy. A documented strategy boost success rate of your content marketing efforts by 36%.
Read More: Way to Develop a Successful Content Marketing Campaign
A clear content strategy helps you to:
- Define goals
- Track research
- Plan content
- Record progress
- Match Content
- Stay Organized
- Effective deployment
6) How to write as a top notch content marketer:
It is obvious that as a content marketer you have to keep onwriting to attract and engage more audience every day.
But most of the content marketers are below average in this field.
Every day I see numerous marketers who are pushing quantity over quality.
If you think that content marketing is just about writing content, then you are wrong. If your blog is free from grammar errors that don't mean that you are a great content marketer.
7) Scrappy Designer:
May be you are the one who is generating great results even without great design. Yet, you need to understand that a better design will improve the reach of your content marketing efforts.
You can easily use and edit images to create a compelling story. Even if you have some basic design skills still you can use it to improve your content value.
You can use various photo editing tools or infographic tools to design beautiful images for your content.
8) Compelling Story:
Do you know that 57% content marketers are in favor of telling a compelling story, yet 60% content marketers are failed to do so.
Storytelling is a time consuming yet most productive effort. The only thing you need is to add emotional favor in your story.
9) Versatility:
Are you still putting all your eggs in one basket?
Never do that.
Professional content marketers become more versatile in the content marketing. They work on various forms to boost the reach of their valuable content.
Read More: How Not to Write Meaningless content
Your customer may like:
- Articles
- Podcasts
- Infographics
- Case studies
- Whitepapers
10) How to Collaborate:
If you never ask, when you need to, you will never learn.
When you seek assistance and collaborate with others, you will boost your skills. Partnering with influencers in your industry boost your reach in no time.
Read More: How to get interviewed by professionals
For Example, I have founded eAskme.com and later Sona Mathews collaborated with me to boost my marketing efforts. It was really beneficial collaboration for both of us.
Even if you do not have any connection, still you can start collaborating with an idea.
Final Words:
These are the 10 most critical skills that a content marketer must have. These skills will help you stand apart as a top notch content marketer and the content you will produce go viral in no time.
Do you really want to be a top notch content marketer? Develop these skills.
Do share what is your content marketing strategy?
If you still have any question, feel free to ask me via comments.
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