Digital Marketing: 8 Reasons Its The Next Step After Content Writing
It’s entirely natural to switch careers after working in the same role for a long time. Maybe you don’t enjoy working in the same position or feel stuck as a content writer. No worries, because this blog is for people just like you. We have answered questions like:
- What is digital marketing?
- How is digital marketing different from content writing?
- Why should you even consider switching to a career in digital marketing?
- Which skills are essential for a digital marketer (and how are writing content and marketing interrelated)?
You can also look at our other blogs in this series that talk about a switch from content writing to copywriting and content marketing.
What is digital marketing?
Once someone opens a business, they need to tell their customers about their business. When they communicate about their service or product via digital means, it is called digital marketing. Digital marketing is slowly becoming an integral part of a business’ marketing strategy because of its ability to show cold-hard data and enabling marketers and business leaders to make informed decisions. Thus, digital marketing is now one of the leading careers in today’s technologically driven world.
How are content writing and digital marketing different?
Content writing is a single aspect of digital marketing, whereas digital marketing constitutes a lot more than just content writing. Since all aspects of digital marketing (social media management, search engine optimization and search engine marketing) require content, content writers aid digital marketing.
Why should you consider switching to a career in digital marketing?
Look, content writing is a great career, but it is normal to get tired of your job after a while. You may feel that you need new challenges and also feel the need to increase your income. Thus, looking at other options that compliment your current skill set and adding it is the right decision. Luckily, digital marketing is a great career to move onto for the following reasons:
Lack Of Boredom
If there is a field that changes faster than the speed of light, it is digital marketing. So, you will never feel that you have conquered it all, which is excellent for people who thrive on new challenges. Thus, it is a career that will never bore you or feel monotonous. Plus, if you decide to work in an agency or start your own, you will deal with multiple clients, which brings us to the next advantage.
Dealing With People
When you are a digital marketer, you have to talk to clients, understand their problems, and help them achieve their business goals. Because ultimately, your success depends on your client’s success. Therefore, a large part of being a digital marketer is dealing with people. This is a pretty awesome deal for you if you are an extrovert who derives their energy from human interaction. However, for my fellow introverts, you should be aware that dealing with people is a part of this job (but don’t worry, there are still plenty of reasons to consider digital marketing as a career).
High-Demand
Look, it’s simple: the past few years have caused a significant disruption in how businesses market their products and services. Plus, the way consumers interact with the companies has caused this shift too. It is this reason why digital marketing services have shot up in terms of demand.
If you master even one aspect of digital marketing, fetch clients, and successfully help them earn more, you are set to become a successful digital marketer. And since the internet and capitalism are not going anywhere, digital marketing is here to stay for the long term.
Versatility
As discussed above, there are so many various sub-niches within digital marketing that you can pick and choose your specialization. And changing from one domain to another is easy, too, since your existing skillset will be similar with a few key differences. Thus, this career is one of the most versatile career paths and perfect for someone who faces difficulty making decisions. Suppose you want to change from SEO to SMM after a few years; you can do that with the help of online courses and changing jobs. Your previous profile will aid you as well.
Competitive Pay
When you jump from content writing to digital marketing, you will notice a considerable increase in your salary. Why is this so? Since digital marketers have a very immediate and noticeable difference in the business, the salary is higher. Moreover, content writers have an indirect and often incalculable effect on companies and, therefore, sometimes have problems getting paid what their work deserves.
As a digital marketer, mainly a freelancer, the sky is the limit, given you can achieve results for your clients.
Requires Creativity
What separates the good from excellent is often the creativity of the marketers. Since every marketer has learnt the same techniques, often ingenious and creative ways of overcoming challenges achieve success. Creativity in this context does not mean artistic creativity but rather finding unconventional ways that help you break the online clutter.
Marketers are essentially problem-solvers, and the more creativity you employ to solve the problem, the more extraordinary results you can achieve.
A degree doesn’t matter
I personally know marketers who have done BA or BTech and are currently digital marketers. Since a business is concerned about results, your degree rarely matters. However, your skillset is more vital, and in today’s day and age, the internet is your oyster. The internet has free and paid resources (we recommend using both) to help you better your skills.
Moreover, since you cannot master this career in a few weeks or even a year through just theoretical earning, you need to start interning or scoring freelance gigs to test your skills on live projects. Once you see results, they will motivate you to keep going and work on more significant projects.
Work with Various People
Just like content writing is a small part of digital marketing, other fields like graphic designing, copywriting, content strategy, etc., are also a part of digital marketing. So, every day of work will result in you talking to other people from other departments. And if you are someone who is curious and wants to constantly learn, then digital marketing is the “it” career for you. And who knows, within these interactions, you come across new and creative solutions for your client’s problems.
Which skills are super important in your career as a digital marketer?
Writing
The foundation of every campaign is content; content and digital marketing are interrelated since each component, whether it is ads, social media posts, blog posts, etc., needs content. Thus, you need to have both content and copywriting skills. Most of the time, you have other content writers and copywriters on your team to help you with the content, but your background as a content writer will help you make necessary changes and guide others.
SEO/SEM/social media
All of these skills are sub-niches within digital marketing, and you can choose to specialize in one, more, or all to strengthen your skillset. SEO practices will drive organic traffic to your client’s websites. SEM will help you make budget-friendly and effective paid campaigns for the client’s website or landing pages. Social media will help you in both organic and paid campaigns.
Organic campaigns usually rely on understanding each platform, its tonality, and trends. For example, the content on LinkedIn will differ from that on Instagram since the audiences’ intention while using the platform will vary. On the other hand, social media is also great to generate leads, increase sales, or increase brand awareness via paid ads. As a digital marketer, you can niche-down further and specialize in Instagram ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, etc.
All of the above skills aim to drive desired attention to your client’s product or services, and therefore mastering at least one of them is necessary for your career.
Data Analysis
Analyzing data is a big part of your job; after studying the first data set, you recognize what works and what doesn’t work. After that initial data analysis does you start to deliver goals. Thus, a basic understanding of data and the ability to operate Google Analytics, Search Console, and various other tools will help you make a true impact on your clients.
Thus, data analytics is an essential skill for you.
Email Marketing
It may seem that email marketing is spammy and therefore obsolete; however, experienced marketers suggest otherwise. Thus, this niche within digital marketing is a valuable skill to acquire. Email marketing involves strategic thinking, and therefore you can specialize in just email marketing too.
Technical Understanding
Most of your campaigns demand integration with the website and analytics tool. To successfully navigate it, you need a technical background to understand it. You can hire or take help from a developer or someone familiar with the technical aspects of marketing, but if you are thinking of a long term career, you should go ahead and get some basics of coding to ensure a smooth journey.
Basic Design Skills
Just like writing, you need some basic understanding of graphics. Since so much of marketing online demands excellent visuals, the ability to distinguish good graphics from bad graphics will help you immensely. It will also help you to seamlessly communicate with your designers regarding graphics for new campaigns and any changes in the work they submit.
Creativity
You and your competitors’ marketers generally have the same skillset. But what sets you apart is your approach towards a problem and the creative solution you come up with to tackle the client’s issues. And since every company is marketing online, how do you think you will manage to stand out of the clutter and make your target audience stop scrolling? A tablespoon of creativity with a dash of data analysis will give you a head start for you indeed.
Conclusion
All in all, we discussed that digital marketing uses digital means to market products or services and how content writing is a small part of digital marketing. Next, we discussed various reasons that make digital marketing a promising career like high pay, creativity, interaction with multiple people from different walks of life, lack of boredom, etc. Finally, we saw how content and digital marketing meet, where digital marketing uses content, and digital content marketing also comes under this industry. And to give you an idea, we also discussed various skills that digital marketers need.
