Do you enjoy writing?
Are you looking at building your career as a professional content writer?
You will be then glad to know that content writing is considered an extremely rewarding career nowadays. With the world moving forward into digitalization, content writers are in tremendous demand. This makes content writing an incredibly challenging profession.
Nevertheless, turning into an effective content writer overnight isn’t that simple. You could possibly write on any topic given to you.
However, that is not sufficient. You need to find a target audience, understand what information they would like to know, plan how to make your content splendid and engaging, and identify ways to sell your write-ups through the right reliable channels.
What is Content Writing?
Content writing is the method of planning, organizing one’s thoughts, writing, and editing web material for digital marketing and for promoting purposes. Many people assume content writing is “article or blog writing”. However, the contents are actually of multiple varieties.
It is the foundation of every content that is telecasted or published. Content is required for Video scripts, Speeches, Official emails, Newsletters, Social media posts, Podcast titles, White papers, Landing pages, Web page copy and descriptions for YouTube videos.
How to be a Professional Content Writer in India?
To become a professional content writer one need not bother with a degree. Several companies in India and overseas recruit content writers and freelancers who are committed to contributing quality matters by writing within the stipulated period of time.
Nonetheless, doing content writing courses will assist aspirants with learning the little-known techniques of the profession. Most courses are pocket-friendly and don’t ask for any educational qualifications. Select a content writing course that is recognized worldwide and accredited. Make sure that the course covers all key aspects of content writing, SEO, technical writing, publishing content for a blog, graphic skills, grammar, and much more.
Each word matters, when it comes to writing something that is to be published. Having decent language expertise will provide you with more hold over the language you are planning to use for writing. This as well as expressions, grammar, phrases, quotes, text arranging and punctuation used for writing, all have a significant impact on the successful writing of any content.
The core things to become a professional content writer are to “read a lot, do research and practice writing every day”. This will develop your insight base, develop your creative and thinking abilities and assist you with making an interpretation of complex thoughts into simple language for your readers to comprehend easily.
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Identifying a Niche
Most writers like to work on varied subjects. However, it is important to know that identifying a niche is the first step to success. It will draw many prospective clients and readers to your website as they will trust you have the experience and ability important to produce extraordinary content in that area.
Companies generally recruit content writers who can understand what they’re saying since it works best for them in terms of saving time and money.
Some niches that you can choose from are medicine, healthcare, hospitality, art and travel. Each area is vast and requires long stretches of involvement to comprehend and develop skills in that domain. There are others niches that are easier to work on: product reviews, surveys, how-to-articles, and spiritual and lifestyle niches.
You might wonder if working on a particular niche limits your scope as a content writer. But that’s not true. Focusing on a niche permits you to sharpen your writing skills in that specific field, further expanding your mindfulness and building your proficiency in that field.
You can use multiple writing tools to sharpen your writing skills.
Building Your Writer’s Portfolio
Building your own portfolio website is the best way to get your readers to trust your work. It is necessary that you understand and work on components that will allow your readers to believe what you write.
One approach to do this is to identify a niche that’s in demand and of your interest and then construct a writing portfolio that can showcase your writing capacities.
Once you have identified your niche, think of several content topics that you can write content on. Variety should be the essence of your portfolio. Write a few blog posts, publish an ebook and try writing anything that you feel will be useful information to your readers.
Finally, choose simply to use reasonably priced sites like WordPress.com and launch your writer’s website. This is sufficient to host your writer’s portfolio with your contact information for readers to view.
Please remember, this is one of the most tedious and difficult stages every professional content writer has to go through. Many of them tend to surrender as they do not get to enjoy many monetary benefits based on the hard work they have to put in.
However, if you are persistent about not giving up, you are definitely on your path to success.
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Making a Social Proof
A decent review instantly catches everybody’s eye. It fills in as the best advertising technique for all products and services. That is the reason making a social proof of your work amongst readers is very significantly important.
Quora, Digg, Yahoo Answers, and a few more are decent platforms, to begin with. Such platforms not only help you to flex your writing skills but furthermore pulls in significant social proof and highlight how individuals are reading your work and if they are interested in following up on it too.
Once more, zeroing in on a specific niche will automatically position you as an expert in your subject and that specific domain. The more the readers view your work, the higher the likelihood of you acquiring the trust of your readers.
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Starting a Blog or Website of your own
Whenever we meet or talk about a professional content writer, we naturally visualize an individual who writes his/her own blog or has his/her own website. Indeed, your website is unquestionably your first portfolio.
Owning a blog or a site is the most ideal approach to acquiring possible customers and furthermore to exploring different avenues with your ideas and thoughts. It is additionally useful when it comes to building some technical skills besides improving your content writing abilities.
Joining online groups & communities like Facebook and WhatsApp
Joining WhatsApp, Facebook and other Content writing online communities or groups will keep you connected to other professional content writers. These forums ensure that your written work is reviewed by like-minded people. A third person’s view and feedback can help you in spotting minor flaws in your work so that you can improvise it.
Another advantage of being a part of this group is that many people and organizations post requests for content writing opportunities in these groups. By following them, one can become more aware of additional content writing openings.
Setting up a LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn is viewed as the biggest professional network of experts. Any individual who is not taking their career lightly and wants to rise professionally needs to set up a LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile is your chance to get your name and face before many senior executives and specialists in the industry.
LinkedIn is one of the most confided-in search engines, so when firms tend to search for contenders with a definite set of skills, your profile needs to appear. Ensure you put in the right keywords when you are writing the title or your profile description.
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In case you’re looking for an opportunity as a professional content writer or in any other field, setting up your LinkedIn profile is vital. After you set up your account, it is essential to grow it, as the bigger your network is, the more clients you will attract. You might want to check out these LinkedIn growth hacks to get started.
These tips will not only help you get more connections but also generate more clients.
Working as an Intern
Be available to join internship programs. Many new businesses and organizations in India are offering paid or unpaid internship programs to students and new content writers.
This is a splendid chance to learn, get experience and try out new types of writing opportunities. Also, it helps to improve one’s writing skills. As an intern, your company will expose you to various sorts of writing like blogs, website reviews, surveys, manuals, and more. This can help you to grow as a professional content writer.
Become a Freelancer
There are many freelancing content writing roles available in India these days. You can enlist yourself on websites like Refrens, Freelancer, Upwork, Flexjobs, etc. You’ll discover a ton of content writing opportunities to select from.
The greatest benefit of being an independent freelance writer is that your work brings to you a wide scope of opportunities covering many different domains, cultures and even personalities. It is helpful in acquiring experience to write various kinds of content, instill interpersonal skills and also the capacity to deal with different circumstances professionally.
Become a Full-Time Professional Content Writer
In spite of the fact that content writing is a very lucrative career, there are not many full-time content writer positions offered in India. Most organizations prefer to work with freelance content writers. The only way to procure a full-time content writer position is to start a blog or a site, build a writers portfolio and write on in-demand topics. This will attract not only readers but also companies looking to hire good content writers.
It’s also a smart thought to contact organizations managing content directly and offer your services. You can mail them your new work. There might be a possibility that they like your work, and offer you their “full-time content writer” position.
Don’t forget to check on job portals for any open positions for full-time content writers posted by different companies. At this point, you need to spend most of your time marketing your writing abilities and services.
Conclusion
There are plenty of opportunities for professional content writers. It is true that a career in content writing is extremely competitive. However, there are many instances where successful content writers have made a fortune out of their occupation. If you are looking for a knowledge-intense creative job, content writing is definitely a good choice for you.
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