Skills Required To Become A Freelance Content Writer

What is Freelancing?

Freelancing can be defined as a profile wherein a person does not work for a particular company or an organization. When a person works as a freelancer he/she is considered to be a self-employed person. Freelancing jobs are not for a long-term basis. Freelancers charge money on an hourly basis or based on the work done by them as suggested by the projects given to them by their clients. When a person decides to choose freelancing as their career they can work for multiple clients at the same time or choose to work for a single project at the same time. Freelancing can also be defined as a contract basis job wherein freelancers take projects on a contractual basis. They can charge money on the number of projects taken by them.

Nowadays everyone wishes to work on their own terms rather than going for a monotonous 9-5 job and work as a full-time employee where the growth of the employee is dependent on the growth of the company. Even after putting in all the hard work money earned by a freelancer is much more than a full-time employment job. Freelancing can also be defined as an independent job profile which can also be taken as a part-time job to start for someone as a fresher in this profile.

Advantages of Freelancing

The biggest advantage of freelancing is the brand image that one can create for themselves worldwide through digital mediums. Different advantages of freelancing are:

1. Working Hours

Freelancing in any field provides an advantage of flexible work timings. One does not have fixed working hours like a full-time corporate job. Everyone wishes to work on their terms and not as an employee with fixed working hours. But one should always have to remember that to reach out to the maximum number of clients and clients, submission of projects within the deadline is the most important criterion to grow as a freelancer.

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2. Enough time for your hobbies 

Another advantage of working as a freelancer is to have sufficient time for extracurricular activities that get missed when we work in a corporate world. We always choose to prepare a schedule to take time out for our hobbies or passion to follow but as a freelancer, since we don’t have a fixed working hour we can choose to plan our day as per our choice and take out time for hobbies like playing the guitar, reading a book, singing, etc.

3. Self-employed

Who does not want to become his own boss? Working on their own terms without any boss is great. Isn’t it? Choosing freelancing as a career option gives you the advantage and a chance to show the level of creativity one has in any field they choose to become a freelancer.

Scope of Freelancing

In the current situation wherein the whole world is operating through the internet scope of freelancing increases with time. In today’s time, people are not looking for monetary growth but they are looking for growth in terms of work satisfaction, more security, and leading a happy lifestyle, and working as an entrepreneur so that they work on their own terms. In the corporate world, everything is fixed from dressing sense to style of work and in near future, everyone working in the corporate world would prefer to move from a rigid work style.

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How does it work?

Freelancing can be defined as more and more acquisitions of niche and genuine clients. With the help of the internet, everyone can reach worldwide. In comparison to previous trends start-ups have increased tremendously all over India and through digital platforms existing and new companies both have access to reach clients abroad too. Most of the important factors to start your career as a freelancer is to have your own website.

This is because when we approach a client or if a client approaches us the first thing they notice is the work we have done previously and the website we run. Everything done here is only through the online process- from searching clients to getting projects and the final payment too, Of course within the deadline.

As compared to getting a real job, getting a freelancing client is more hassle-free. Doing the same type of job every day. Anyone with any job profession can choose to become a freelancer at any point in time if they feel if they have the passion to work individually on their own terms. There is a lot of competition in the corporate industry, as there are millions of people applying for the same job position and this increases every year because of some endless flaws in our education system. 

For every such student/ housewife/ professional who wants to earn a good amount of money, the internet can be a great ocean of opportunity for them to kick-start their career in a worthwhile way.

What is Content Writing?

Content Writing can be defined as a process to write, edit with proper planning usually for companies that operate digitally. It includes writing articles, blogs, and scripts for any marketing company. One can choose to write for a particular or multiple social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or even write a podcast and create their existence in the market. Content can be defined differently for different people which can be expressed through different mediums such as writing, through giving a speech, or through any medium of art.

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Importance of Content Writing

Creating a brand image for any logo or any individual is very important. But once a brand image is created then consistency to maintain it is very important as there is a lot of competition in the market. And there comes the role of Content writing. Advertising through videos and commercial advertisements has become an old trend but creating an impact in people’s minds through your writing has significantly become very important for any business to grow in their respective sectors. Collating different pieces of information and recreating through your thought process and creative and innovative writing skills creates a brand image for anyone in the market.

Reasons Why Content Writing is Important?

There are various reasons why content writing plays an important role. Some of them are as follows:

1. Creating a brand value   

Brand awareness creation is a long process. One needs to make customers or clients understand the product sold to them through a different level of creative writing. Regular updates on different social media platforms create a continuous presence of the brand value which we want to create. One can also keep the audience engaged even through regular blogging so that our customers get to know that we are still there in the highly competitive market.

2. SEO Optimization  

SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. In other words, it means a method to improve the presence of your site. More visibility results in garnering more attention from the customers and it also helps to attain visibility and presence. It can be either a written description or a video description depending upon the need of the marketing strategy. Hubspot is considered to be one of the known blogs for SEO content strategies which play a very important role for marketing purposes.

3. Business Establishment   

To make the audience understand the work of a company or an individual does or service they provide, writing proper content plays a very important role. Regular updates on websites or personal blog sites keep the interest of the people following or reading it intact and with time it also develops the confidence and trust of the people intact.

4. External Websites   

If the content written on the website is updated on a regular basis or the content written is relevant on the blog pages then it also helps to link the external links too to our page or blog to explain the services we provide. Linking external links helps to improve the Google search engine rating.

5. Visibility of the good content  

If the content written on the website or blog is written like using more numbers or catchy lines which attracts the customers is always shared which also increases the visibility. Using the targeted keywords with high volumes of articles or posts or scripts also increases visibility.

Writing content that grabs the attention is very important. Whenever someone goes through an article or a website one thing that develops an interest in them to read further is the headline. If the headline of an article is an attention grabber which should also be a long tail keyword it creates an interest automatically to read further. There should be something different from other content in the market which can be either using pictures also or questions and answers for the public to get their query solved in a detailed manner.

6. Building Customer retention  

Having control of what you are writing or what our targeted audience interests them with changing time plays a very important role. We all have our favorite brand which is because it stands out in the competitive market. Similarly, when we start writing content it should also have a digital strategy which is important for customer retention as with time more people are in the digital world.

For example along with our website has an Instagram page that explains more along with catchy pictures, or a Facebook page that creates interest. One more advantage of having catchy social media pages is that it increases the number of followers as when people tend to like the content or services we provide they tend to share with their friends and family which not only helps in building customer retention but also increases the visibility as the number of people increases with time.

Scope of Content Writing as a Career- 

Nowadays writing content is not considered to be something new to pursue a career. But at the same time Content writing is something that can be pursued as a career in any field which increases the scope of it. Any field requires a content writer whether a company sells financial products, beauty products, services they are offering, anyone who is running a media company or an IT company, or even if someone is already a published author too then also they need a content writer to showcase their story in a presentable way.

In today’s time anyone who is writing a post or poem on their Facebook page or tweeted also on their respective page then also are a content writer. All we need to do is to start professionally.

Because of the above-stated reasons companies are hiring content writers on regular basis to manage the marketing strategies for the companies. Below are the following points to understand the scope of content writing as a career:

1. Content Writers drives 50% of the business in the market
2. Content marketing plays a very important role in the traditional market
3. Companies that tend to invest more time in writing Content have a higher conversion rate
4. Almost 80% of the top companies hire professional content writers to maintain resistance

Important Attributes for writing a good quality content

Some of the important points to keep in mind to write good quality content are-

1. Simplicity 

The most important attribute to writing good quality content is simple language. As a content writer, the most important role is to explain the most difficult words also in a simple manner.

2. Credibility   

Any content is written should also be written with accurate data and figures which should not be directly copy-pasted from any existing content written on a particular topic.

3. Captivating 

It should be written in such a way so that it captures the interest of the targeted audience as keeping the interest of the people intact plays a very important role.

4. Customized 

Every content is written differently related to different services, products are also targeted towards a different set of targeted customers. Therefore, any content written should be written in a way that it should be able to explain the brand it represents in a simple way answering the very question of the people or attending the queries of the people. It should also be such that it should reach the customer directly.

5. Appealing  

The engagement of the customer in the correct way is the most important attribute for a content writer. Any article is written or any published post engages the right set of customers or not is decided by the number of likes, shares, comments, and posts by the people. So more likes and views signify that the right set of customers are targeted and if not then content written should be worked upon.

Skills required to become a freelance content writer-

After understanding the brief concepts about what is freelancing and content writer, brief, let us know some of the important skills required to become a freelance content writer-

1. Flexibility 

A lot of content material looks the same and dull as the content written does not have any flexibility to change the pattern and style as per the changing requirement. Content writers need to change and learn their patterns and styles and also be updated with the changes in the market.

2. Well-built Research Ability  

Researching in-depth plays a very important role in creating our existence in the market. It also adds value to the content written and also increases the visibility out of the articles written on the same topic. Today the information we want on anything is available on the internet, but at the same time, we also need to remember that information available in the market cannot be accurate. So as a content writer strong research skills are a very important attribute to become a freelancer content writer.

3. Concrete Understanding of SEO

As explained above search engine optimization is a very important aspect for anyone starting their career as a content writer. If someone starts writing and their content is not visible to the users then it is of no use. It is important to understand the important keywords before writing and also understand the descriptions in an effective way.

4. Management skills 

Managing things is not just about keeping things in a proper way. It is about showcasing the writing skills so that visibility increases in the mind of the readers. Submitting assignments at the last minute time creates a bad impression on the clients which loses the confidence and trust we built. This also fails in getting more projects. Prioritizing your projects as per the deadline given is also very important.

5. Potential to be focused

Being focused is very important before we start writing. High concentration is very important to research and give quality content delivery. In today’s time, there are many distractions around us but we can choose to meditate ourselves so that we can be focused deliver in a proper manner. To start with we should go for smaller projects so that we can concentrate and be focused to complete them on time.

6. Meeting Deadlines  

Clients who give us the project to complete also have deadlines to meet and submit on time. Whatever work we do in life professionalism is something that helps us to grow in our careers. A casual approach towards anything leads us nowhere. Along with the deadlines anyone as a content writer it’s responsibility which they take is to deliver quality content as well. This is because content represents the brand image as well.

7. Communication Skills 

Having good communication skills is an important trait for a content writer. Once a project or an assignment is given by a client and post which if any problem is faced while completing it then there should be formal communication through the mail so that there are no gaps or confusion in between.

There is no space for any excuse for the work to be not completed on time in this field as we know that content writing is also a mode of communication. Timely communication in a professional manner via mail increases the trust of the client and it also helps the client to maintain courtesy towards us.

8. Improvise, Improvise & Improvise- 

Content written in the first attempt is never perfect. It always needs improvisation. Editing content required focused attention and patience. In addition to this grammatical errors should also be checked again along with the punctuation marks, spelling errors. One should always remember that improvisation requires more time than writing the original content. 

9. Delivering Quality content

As a content writer, one should do best to deliver the best quality content to the client within the deadline given by the client. Once a customer assigns a project to a content writer they assume them to be a superb writer as when one client is satisfied they refer to more number of clients which results in earning more amount of money.

10. Staying In Demand–  

As a freelance content writer to create your existence and maintaining it is a critical attribute. This can be done if as a writer one stays updated with the changes as with time competition increases. Maintaining our presence on social media platforms not only helps to get more options to apply for a job but also gives us a boost to increase the connectivity and widen our networks in the market.

FAQs

Q. How do I become a freelance content writer?

A- Becoming a freelance content writer might not be the easiest thing in India, however, you can try through platforms like Fiverr and Upwork to find content writing gigs.

Q. How do I get a job as a content writer?

A- Certification plays a very important role in getting a job as a content writer because it helps the employer to trust the candidate and affirms that one has been through formal content writing training.

To conclude, there is more to becoming a freelance content writer if one has the right aptitude to write the keywords. Strong research skills, proper SEO knowledge, and staying updated with the changes in the market are some of the ways to ensure to become a successful content writer. Taking time to develop skills continuously helps to gain more knowledge and along with the increase in vocabulary knowledge. Reading books to improve communication skills also plays an important role. So always go for writing which is easily understood by the clients and also readers in general.