8 Areas to Expand a Career in Content Writing: Find out the sources

Content writing field is a huge orbit. There's place for everyone who wish to launch their career. Those who are already into content - they have great scope to improve their expertise areas.  So let's just find out what are the basic areas available for writing online.

What's your expertise in content writing? There are various ways and methods to learn, but one of the most commonly proven methods is to get a certification in a specific area and begin to grow from thereon.

Read - 50 Free online writing Courses

Let's begin with some of online sources available for acquiring certification in web content. With exponential growth in websites, for every website, there's  requirement for writing web content.  Dynamic or static, web content brings audience, traffic and leads. It's significance has vital role in business.  You need to expand your writing skills for various areas of business along with capabilities to craft writing with important details.

Web content certification sources:

You must have already been submitted web content for few clients and established yourself as a good web content writer. Giving scope for better writing skills, you can pursue to gain certification in one of the specialized sources and grow your clientele.  Learning through the video lessons and taking assignment quizzes will build your profile and will grow your expertise. There are certain difficult subjects in the preparation of web content like - science research, technical engineering websites, space and orbit etc., To be able to write for various both easy and difficult subjects, you need good learning.

Certification in web content - online web writing course 

Web content writing skills course

Writing for the web

To earn good number of clients, not only your pitch, but your sample web content can be a lot of help. Basing on the sample work, clients en-route.  The pay for each page would be anywhere around $3-4 per page. For those who have earned reputation and yielded good results, their pricing is little high between $5 - $ 12 per page and some writers even charge more.

However, few things that should be kept in mind while working on web content are :

Check readability score as it's an important aspect to check with the audience responding to your content.

While there are free online courses for web content, paid courses are also equally benefiting for expanding your writing business in web content.

Check for plagiarism before your submit to the client.

Create a persona before writing.

Create a web content plan as guide.


Blog writing certification sources:

Get blogging facts - business blogging facts that says at least 126% lead growth is achieved by small business through blogs (Source: ThinkCreative) and 61% of U.S online buyers make a purchase based on recommendations from a blog. (Source:Blogher)

Due to massive benefit from blog writing, you now know how important it's to own a blog and publish regularly. So where to start blogging and what should be your topic/ title.  It could be any of your topic that you wish to write, but ensure to follow the topic seriously and use tools like buzzsumo to get info about content already published so that you can choose a different angle of discussion.

Publish a blog post weekly once and have a content calendar that will help you to work on blog posts in advance. Make it a long-form blog post above 2000 words to get more views, comments and shares.

Your blog can be your sample work and a tool to market your services. Give a professional look to beat your competitors. Never be in a hurry to finish the post fast, but spend good time of 1-4 hours in preparing the content, so that you can organize content information professionally and invite the interest of audience.

Vice-versa, you can also take up blogging courses online and get in-depth view of blogging to grow your business. Most often, if you have noticed, though your profile is having lot of experience in writing, you may never win a contract, because there are several reasons attached to it, as lack of good writing skills, or flow of writing style or poor quality content may drive back your customers.

So, it's definitely good to get a thorough understanding about blogging before advertising and marketing your services.

Introduction to Blogging

Press Release certification sources:

As  per the opinion of many writers - press release is the most difficult writing with much scope for rejections to rewrite. But the truth is, press release is purely a technical type of content that requires sound knowledge of writing style. Many think it should like a news report. But, a Press Release is a business model of announcement about the launch of a new business or service which is why, there's a need for inclusive and exclusive details about business launch.

To pursue a certification and training in Press Release writing, check the following courses:

International school of communication 

Chartered Institute of Public Relations

Media Release Writing Course: Write and Promote a Press Release

2 Online Press Releasing writing courses

As small and medium enterprises are on the rise with the medium of Internet, and this is a global platform, press release training is quite ideally beneficial.  You can market your services globally and get contracts. Although Press Release may be just one page or two pages, it's essential that certain writing pattern may be followed to bring a professional presentation. One of the important notes to keep in mind while writing is that - you are writing for a third person and they are audience. Give more scope for asking questions and generate lot of interest.

Download Hubspot Press Release Kit here 

Every press release writing is different and this is why, preparing an outline is essential as it helps in writing content effectively with organized information.

Article writing certification sources:

Article writing is probably the first medium source to advertise and marketing your writing. Mostly, it is an effective tool for writers to reach customers widely. Because, if content quality is not readable, zero customers turn to your services.  With number of article directories available for publishing your works, there's no opportunity you can let go without publishing.  Guest posts are also highly in demand. But what would you do, if your article is not receiving any hits or not generating any inquiries? Yes, definitely, you would go back and check your article to work more efficiently on the next article.

Most common practice for many writers before writing an article is to check the following:

With hundreds of pages available with free content as a guide for article writing, many debut writers find it hard through their way making an entry into article writing. For further knowledge in grasping the art of article writing, there are free and paid courses available online for article writing certification.

10 Universities offering free writing courses online 

Learn to write articles with our Home study course

Article writing course: How to write articles

Online Workshop: Freelance magazine article writing

Social Media content certification sources:




Social media is the next big thing online that's already created a big chain of action. As you can notice, there are ads on facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and in other channels.  You may have to write ad posts for a specific product or service.  What are the specific areas that you need to give special emphasis while writing? How should the writing be and what's so important while writing for social media? There are some of the questions that commonly come up as this is a different field along side of article writing, blogging, web content and press release.

Working with the help of templates is most recommended while preparing social media content. Read - 6 social media templates to save you hours of work

Download guide for creating a social media strategy. Click here

Download social media strategy template. Click here

Download social media content calendar. Click here

Very few can make it through the success, but it needs little extra hard work to get a grip on the writing. However, there are many good courses available online to get certified as a social media writer.

Some of these are free and others are paid.

YouTube marketing is also a very attractive channel that allows you to record videos and upload to your channel.  This is a free marketing tool.  For every new or existing business, video marketing is part of marketing strategy that calls for high-end preparation to get more likes, views and subscriptions.

Social Media Marketing certification 

10 excellent free online courses in social media marketing 

How to have a social media strategy and how does it help a business? Find out here - 50 stats that should guide your social media marketing strategy in 2018


Content strategy certification sources:



As other topics of content writing are easily understood, content strategy is slightly difficult to understand.

What is content strategy?

________________________________________________________________________
 “creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”  Kristina Halvorson
________________________________________________

 Read - Developing a content marketing strategy

How to plan a content marketing strategy: A start-to-finish guide

The point of content strategy planning comes anywhere between before actually entering a market or prior to the stage of content marketing. We will discuss about content marketing below.

In content strategy it's all about

- governance
- policies
- How-to-go-about
- content and data structure
- themes
- content templates
- business needs
- audience needs
- content gap analysis
- metadata frameworks
- recommended content types
- UX (user experience)
- Taxonomy

Content strategy is bit difficult to understand and it requires in-depth study about content in business. It can be stated that it's more technical rather than plain form of content.

Read my blog content strategy

Pursuing a course in content strategy is quite beneficial, especially if you are fully occupied with content writing jobs, content strategy will explore more to gain better knowledge as to how content writing works for a business.

Also the term "content strategy" is used in specific countries as shown in Google Trends.

Accordingly, you can reach out to business clients who are familiar with the term "content strategy" and more probably implementing it in their business respectively. According to me, the more you learn about content strategy, there's more opportunity for you to write well and gain expertise in content strategy.  In fact there are few freelance content strategists who are thoroughly experts in taking care of managing entire content needs of an organization / business.

Simply speaking, content strategy for a business is to ask yourself - what's the methodology to undertake in order to market your business? In other words, what's it should be like, methods, ideas, participation of stakeholders etc., Conclusively summarizing, which way to go in reaching out customers for business? The final goal for a business in using content strategy is to gain good volume of positive results. Note - not negative results at all.  To that effect, content strategy needs efficient, effective, profit-oriented results.

The following are the sources to pursue a certification in content strategy.

Content strategy for professionals: Engaging audiences

Certificate in story telling & Content Strategy - UW Professional & continuing education

Content Marketing certification sources:

If content strategy is already working, why content marketing? How different is it from content strategy?  These are some of the common questions that come up among many writers.

Find the difference -  Difference between content and content marketing

What's the difference? Content strategy vs content marketing

Most sophisticated, content marketing comes in after content strategy. Because, while making content strategy plan - content marketing is discussed. While every business is need of a content marketing plan, it hails as an essential requirement and it's also said that without content marketing, there's no possibility of winning customers and staying in business successfully.

Therefore, as a content marketer, you have the best opportunity to lead businesses successfully. But, in order to achieve, you need extensive knowledge as to how content marketing works, it's success rate, capabilities, skills required and how-to-do, strategical techniques, market trends, business vs customer interests, customer psychology, buying behavior, browsing behavior, market trends, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), SERP etc.,

There are very good online training courses available for getting certified in content marketing. These are:

8 free courses on content marketing and writing

Training in web writing, social media, accessibility and plain English

Free content marketing course

Digital Marketing content certification sources:

What is digital marketing?
____________________________________________________________________________

Digital marketing (also known as data-drivenmarketing) is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium." 
(Source: Google)

_______________________________________________________________________________

As there is wide implementation of digital marketing and involvement of several processing areas, it's important to get a certification.  Read - what is digital marketing?


Download Digital Marketing Plan Template - Click here

As a digital marketer, you will have several phases of managing plenty of data that you may have to audit and streamline for various purposes of marketing. Digital marketing is the most popular marketing online, check HubSpot Marketing Statistics 2017

You will have to interact with the following methods for the purpose of digital marketing:

- Your website / blog
- Ebooks and whitepapers
- Infographics
- Social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest etc.,)
- Online coverage (PR, social media, reviews)
- Online brochures

Some of the techniques that you need to implement are:

- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Marketing
- Inbound Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
Content-led advertising. Example - Facebook ads
Email Marketing
Online PR

Choose the digital marketing specialization course:


Digital Marketing specialization

Learn online Marketing - Free Training course from Google

Free digital marketing course and certification


Conclusion

Now you have an entire guide of content writing. You can choose any  field of your choice and begin to expand your career whether a job or freelance writing. In both ways, you have the advantage.

Mail Me: alphacontentwriting@gmail.com