5 Offbeat Tips To Be A Good Content Writer

Be The Perfect Fit For Content Writing Jobs 

Content Writing, like the call centre jobs in the 90s, is gradually becoming a popular job. Many Indian students start their career as a content writer. Some even dabble in content creation before graduating.


            Naturally, you will see that there are many average content writers out there who are hiding in the crowd and are barely making a living with this job. If you have self respect, you would want to exclude yourself from the crowd of novice content creators.

How can you become a good content writer?

Becoming a good content writer is not an overnight process. It takes time and patience. Very soon you will realise how even sitting on chair can drain your energy as you struggle to reach the desired word limit. Here are 5 ways that can help you to be a good content writer.


1. Have Respect For The Job - If you think you can use google to fill your blank Microsoft Word with rephrased sentences, think again. Google will certainly help you in content writing, but content writing does not mean just changing the words in a sentence that you find online and use your own words to write about a certain piece. Rephrasing words can be done by article spinners. You are not needed for that. The primary job of a content writer is to entice the readers to buy something or at least to take interest on something. You can search in Google to include facts in your write up, but the writing should be original. The keywords should be there. And most importantly, the reader should not drift away after reading a few lines.

           People who are a little emotional might think, "Eh! What am I doing? I am just taking information from Google and writing it in my own words." Please don't be harsh on yourself. What you are doing is, you are using the information but you are writing in your own language and in your own style! If you use the spices from my company to cook a food, will I say that I have cooked the food? No! Just remember to include your originality in the writing.

This is one of the content writing best practices that people tend to forget in their quest to learn the technicalities of it.



2. Read The Job Card Carefully - A lot of promising content writers do not read the job card - the description of what is wanted from the writer - carefully enough. As a result, they sometimes forget to use keywords, includes irrelevant information or writes about topics that they are not asked to write about. I, once, wrote about Kedarnath Trek when I was actually tasked to write about Kedarkanth Trek. So, read carefully what is wanted of you.

If you are asking yourself - how to improve my content writing - then you must read between the lines. Many a times in Upwork, the clients in their job description write some quirky words and tell the writers pitching to the clients to mention those words. This is done to see if the writers have read the job description carefully.


3. Have Atleast A Basic Knowledge Of SEO - Do you know how to use Google trends to know about the trending searches? Are you aware that keyword density does not matter any more? Are you aware of the terms H1 H2 H3, meta description, SERP etc? Can you manipulate the html header of the blog? These basic SEO knowledge should be known to you. This is not school anymore. Mere writing well will not suffice. You have to make your write up market worthy.

4. Don't Be Choosy At First - Across the internet you will stumble upon tips where you are told to choose a niche topic if you want to be good content writer. I say, don't do this in the beginning of your career. Write about anything and everything. That way you will shed the fear of writing about unknown topics. At the same time, you will gain experience quickly. After one or two years, you can examine what topics suit you best and then you can be choosy about selecting the topics.


5. Don't Get Locked Up In Your House - If I had started my content writing career earlier, I could not have earned much because back then I had no experience of dealing with different types of people, how to convince them or how to convey my feelings to them. Content writing requires people skill. If you do not have communication skills, you cannot move ahead much as a content writer. So, you need to meet with people, have real life experiences. You need to know HOW TO TALK.

Bonus Tip 1.

If you are just starting out, consider taking up some course on Hubspot. They are free. These courses help immensely in understanding the SEO tactics, content marketing best practices and a host of other content writing related things.


Bonus Tip 2.

 This is not your college assignment anymore ( except - academic writing). You have to use informal tone. Lighten up. Speak as if your are sitting infront of the reader.


After you create a content, you will feel like it is your baby. I can't describe the feeling I get when I see my writing being proudly used by the companies.


So, go and CREATE something new today.



- Marifur Rahaman
+91 8334894803
marif.here@gmail.com
facebook.com/rahaman123