Advertising is undeniably a key to successful marketing. In fact, the cost of advertising products is in some cases half the cost of marketing activities. Recent years have been a triumph for content marketing, with most companies in developed markets setting and increasing content marketing budgets. This has led to a significant increase in demand for content creators. The content creators' job is to create texts, photographs and video stories, blog posts, social media posts, podcasts, and other types of media.
Principles of content marketing
The basic principle of content marketing is that content helps to target people who have an emerging or established need and who are influenced to choose the company or product mentioned in the content. Content is shared in many different forms, from social networks to events. The most effective content marketing for many products is content marketing focused on Google search results. Our market is characterized by the fact that the most effective content distribution is through editorial content portals. There is not yet a glut of content, so it is quite willingly brought up in search results. The quality of content will have to improve over time and the demand for quality content creators will grow.
Content marketing is not something new. It is just that the internet has helped it to flourish on a whole new level. Until a more convenient way of finding information is devised, online content marketing will dominate. But even with the emergence of other broadcasting media, the content will remain the best filter and impact tool. Accordingly, there will always be a need for content creators and authors.
The profession of content creator
When I look at articles with similar content, I notice that even on the same portal, a better-written article will be more highly quoted in Google search results. Therefore, the author, the content creator, will always remain the most important person in content creation. In modern content marketing, content units are created taking into account many factors. It is not only an attempt to influence with appealing and comprehensible content but also a wide range of technical know-how that allows that content to be brought up in search, to initiate its spread on social or editorial portals.
Content creators have rarely made a living from this business alone in recent times, apart from those working in editorial offices. However, in Western countries, the work of a content creator is quite often freelance and eventful. Particularly popular are areas related to travel, testing leisure events and services, lifestyle products and services. You have fun, you use your knowledge of content creation - and you make a decent income from it. Both in Europe and abroad, there are several categories of content creators based on content creation and sales of services.
Aspiring content creators - thousands of enthusiasts whose silver lining is something like the career of Floyd Uncorked (Keith Floyd). Some of these enthusiasts are not selling the content they create, they are creating their own blogs, trying to build their own businesses. Others, mostly philology and journalism graduates, try to write articles for other websites. Nine out of ten in the first group runs out of enthusiasm after 6-12 months, while a similar number of enthusiasts in the second group work in non-content creation jobs and only occasionally write one or two articles. From a small number of persistent ones, several groups are formed.
One of them is editorial journalists, writers, editors, full-time creators of texts, photographs and video stories. Recently, the most in-demand writers have been in quite specialized fields, covering construction, agriculture and industry. The greatest demand is for those who are able to find interesting topics on their own, who understand the issues in a particular field and who have sources that give them the information they need. Even among leisure writers, who are in plentiful supply, there is always a demand for those who can get to interesting events and arrange interviews with well-known people.
A decade ago, working as an editor would have been a dream job for a content creator. With the emergence of the internet, the most persistent and eager to be independent, can become owners of thriving media outlets - those who try to turn a small blog into a popular portal. In the West, this trend is already gaining strength. In social networks, those who start with a blog are now creating their own portals and hiring additional writers. One of the most successful examples is "hauzz.com", which has gone from being a blog about renovating your home to becoming perhaps the most popular architecture and interior design portal. There is a natural process of new media development that will sooner or later move towards maturity. It will then be very difficult for newcomers to displace the newly established portals, compared to the period when the old dinosaurs were pushed aside by the latter. Sometimes persistence can have lasting positive consequences. Unfortunately, over time, this category has gone from being content creators to company administrators, to advertising money collectors.
Those who want to remain independent and do creative work usually stay out of portal development. They work in a rather narrow field, continuously improving their skills by attending seminars and training courses, and making useful contacts with professionals and government representatives. When observing the work of authors in Western countries, it is clear that they are mostly commissioned by copyright agencies and have contracts with many media outlets, from which they receive direct commissions. They sell the same work to several publications. For example, when they travel around a country, they produce and sell many differently written articles, with different photographs and video sequences. Comparing the rates of article production in different countries shows that they are very similar, and you can often even get an article cheaper in the West. However, there is more money to be made there, because there is a higher volume of orders on a similar topic. It is quite common to see unsolicited articles. They are sold through authors' agencies or article sales portals.
In the former category, authors start communicating directly with their clients and write articles for them, with or without concern for where the article is published. There will be demand for both, but observing the trends in the West, I notice that those who sell articles knowing immediately where they will be published have more perspective. That is the way to go in the advertising agency format. Eventually, such authors and their companies will have the opportunity not only to sell individual articles but also to create and maintain separate sections and themes in online media. Classically, this is the format of television, where a program is not made up of its own editorial staff, but of programs produced by independent production companies.
I have been able to observe how this process has evolved in television almost from scratch. It can also be successfully applied to online media. Reputation and the right choice of the portal are key to developing an online production business. The author should take a broader view of his/her work, looking for ways not only to sell single productions but also to create long-term projects. Following the classical media in this field, it is possible to use one's creative potential and earn the most.
Content platforms
If we type "hotels in London" into Google, we can't find a single London hotel website. On the front page there will be "booking.com", "hotels.com", content platforms "Tripadvisor.com", "Lonelyplanet.com". The top positions are occupied by very strong platforms that are investing heavily in SEO, in Google.
Content platforms are the basis on which content will be distributed. The platform can have its own regular audience and attract traffic from social networks and search engines. A content portal is evaluated on the basis of its traffic, the number of key phrases available in searches, the number of requests, and its average position in those requests. The number of fans on social portals may also be relevant, as long as they are not artificially gathered fans with a low CTR. However, existing positions in Google search dominate and are likely to dominate. Therefore, the relationship between the platform and Google should be a key criterion when choosing where to publish content.
Those who established relationships with the now dominant commercial TV stations in 1998-1999, when they were just starting to grow, have survived for quite a long time after they started to dominate the market.
For those who plan to act as an intermediary between the advertiser and the portal, it must always be kept in mind that sooner or later the client will demand a result. In recent times, it has become relatively easy to measure the result of content marketing on the Internet, but unfortunately, not all portals provide it. The key results are how many people read the content and how much time they spent on it. It is possible to measure approximately how many content links were seen in a given market, in a Google search, and what percentage of those who saw the link clicked on it. Knowing the overall market, it is always possible to calculate the market share achieved by publishing specific content.
Advantages of the author
Various translation and even content creation applications are appearing. However, it is doubtful whether artificial intelligence can write better than an experienced author. An author will be even more marketable if, in addition to knowledge and expertise in his or her field, he or she has a large archive of photographs and video material. A camera should always be in the author's pocket. He takes photographs of his meals when he eats, and he brings back several thousand images from his travels. It is just as important to archive the shots he has in order to make them easy to use. For example, the same shot from a trip to Paris can be captioned: 'Champs Elysees', 'chestnuts in bloom', 'outdoor tables', or 'people in a hurry'.
The author's ability to work with graphic photo-management software is a great advantage. Authors who know how to create a video montage are increasingly in demand.
Awareness of SEO and constant monitoring of its news are in high demand. It is difficult to predict how long this will remain the case, as the visitor market is likely to be divided between content portals over time and Google will become less important. We already search for news on specific news portals without using Google. In the long term, the same flows should also go to specialized areas.
What it takes to become a successful content creator
If you write articles quickly and without creative suffering, you don't need talent. Steady work helps you build up your writing skills. For example, I have benefited greatly from keeping a travel diary from the age of 18. For quite a long time, writing did not bring any material benefit. But I soon realized that creating and disseminating good content can have the greatest effect. Working in advertising, I calculated that one well-written and disseminated article could earn a company a good amount of money. The content creator will be in demand when he thinks about what the client will earn and how he will earn it. To understand a client's business, you need to have knowledge and insight into the processes.
Don't be afraid to volunteer. It is much better to write for free for a publication with a large audience than to put articles on your own page with a minimal reading audience. It is much easier to create your own portal once you have established a name and content that is in demand than to try to build it from scratch. Social portals are a pointless waste of time unless you are a genius. But don't write for the sake of it if it doesn't give you experience (dull SEO texts). Build a database like a blog. Your meetings and events should be archived and easily findable. Eventually a lot of events, people start to connect, and you start to see what's going on at a deeper level than what's published. You will be able to successfully manage a larger circle of contacts, and keep in mind the celebrations that are important to them.
Don't bother writing an article if you don't have any ideas, because time is also money. Create a structure for your article, note down the main points, work out in your head how the phrases should sound and write them down. Once written down, the phrases seem to disappear, giving way to new ideas. You can even work on several articles at the same time and even in different fields.
Author's earnings
Not everyone likes a sales job that allows them to earn more in any field. However, there are many different ways to earn money from writing. Authors are usually paid according to the number of characters (pages) they write. Some editors don't like this, because the author starts to pour from one mouth to another. They prefer to share their earnings, depending on the contract, or tell them a specific budget for the article.
The increase in author fees has greatly reduced the options available to editors. It is now more profitable to buy services from people working abroad, as tax rates are almost half as high. Content marketing is not coming out of its cocoon, as it is still difficult to get enough orders to make a decent living. However, there are also a lot of start-up or self-employed authors in the West who are not happy with the number of orders either. Affiliate marketing helps them earn a little extra money. Unfortunately, this is also not well-developed in many countries.
Watching this profession in Western countries, one is often envious. I would like to believe that we will have a similar situation in Europe in the future. Content creators should communicate with each other more actively and find ways to change the market so that the money wasted on advertising can be spent on content advertising.
Sergejus Jeriomenko
Many years of experience in the media business. Currently developing the viskas.lt group of portals: asa.lt, anonsas.lt, autoreviu.lt, visasverslas.lt, agrozinios.lt.
I invite authors to collaborate, more on a producer or project manager basis. We would work with well-written authors, who at the same time would sell the placement of their content on our potals. For terms and conditions, please contact sj@iks.lt . Selling at our rates will definitely earn you more than just writing.
We can also create a separate portal.