Effective content marketing writers are hard to come by. To be proficient in this career, they are forced to wear many hats in laying the foundations of inbound marketing campaigns that produce great results. These writers are in great demand because they can reduce an organization’s expense in content marketing by 62 percent while producing three times more leads at the same time. How can you build your career and be successful as a content marketing writer?

Build your career as content marketing writer

Here are five tips that you should consider:

1. Create a professional website to engage clients

If you really want to be successful as a content marketing writer, you need to create a professional-looking website that will make a good impression on first-time visitors. Here are some tips on how you can do this.

• Your content must show first-time visitors that there is something they can get in your website. Show them that there is something there for them (i.e. information they are looking for, or a product they need).
• Make all the content on your website is very easy to share and is localized, i.e. if you are a local business and let’s say doing marketing in Los Angeles you need to make sure your content speaks to your customers on a geographical level. This will easily generate local leads.
• Put a call to action (CTA) on all the pages on your website.
• Use infographics. They are easier to understand
• Offer quality freebies such as e-books and white papers to your audience.
• Use professionally-crafted videos and images.

2. Take time and do some research

High-quality content can only be created if given enough thought, planning and time. There is no substitute for thorough research before putting your thoughts on paper. Extensive research on any topic takes time. If you want to build your career as a content marketing writer, you should be willing to invest time in research and analytics.

You have chosen a career that involves a lot of research – subject or topic research, keyword research, statistics research and so forth. Most of your research work will be done online but some may need to be done offline.

As such, you will need a lot of patience, especially if the topic is relatively new to you. You need to learn all the angles of the topic before you attempt to write anything about it. Fortunately, you have Google, Yahoo, and other internet search engines as your sources. Books, encyclopedias, periodicals are other offline sources that also can be used in your research.

3. Be creative and thoughtful

Being creative is a critical element in being original. You need to make your content stand out and unique because if you are not, Google will flag you down. Traffic is primarily driven to your website through search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. That is why you cannot just publish content on your website that is not original and unique.

Create something that is totally different but interesting. This requires deep thinking and thorough research on any subject. When you are ready to write about it, be creative with the story that you want to tell.

Try to guess what your audience wants to know about the subject and then write your story with this in mind. Empathizing with your readers is the key to getting them engaged and not losing your audience.

4. Keep learning and improving

Marketing is always dynamic. There is never a single formula that can ensure your success all the time. You need to accept the fact that as a content marketing writer, learning never stops. If you continue to study your craft, your improvement is assured.

Make time in your daily and weekly schedule for reading and viewing materials that are related to content marketing as well as your market niche. It will also do you good if you can attend industry events as they come. This will help you stay current with the changing trends and understand the pulse of your target audience at any given time.

5. Ask for feedback

You simply cannot improve in a vacuum. As a content marketing writer, you need to know how your readers are reacting to what you have written. Thankfully, there are many proven ways by which you can get accurate feedback from your readers. Here are some of them.

• Conduct customer satisfaction surveys on your website. They can be done on short survey forms or long survey forms. There are many survey templates available online that you can use for this purpose.
• Place comment boxes on your website pages where your visitors can give their feedback.
• Use on-site widgets that can collect customer feedback without them knowing it. The Beacon on-site widget is an example. It can collect insights as to which articles are the most clicked on by visitors.

The guest blog article was written by Meggie Nahatakyan, who is a marketing expert and a data junkie with more than six years of experience in the field. Aside from being a marketing nerd, she loves taking her life to the extreme with bungee jumping and skydiving when she feels some freedom. You can follow here on Twitter.