Last updated - February 7, 2023
Content creation is becoming more popular with time as more people aspire to be content creators. One reason for this popularity is independence. As a content creator, you can design your schedule and work any time or day.
Other reasons are that you don’t need any experience to start, you can work from anywhere, pick your niche, and even do it as a side hustle. The creator economy is growing exponentially and is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion as more than 50 million people consider themselves creators. However, you need to stand out from the crowd and attract a large audience to make money. In this regard, here’s how to jumpstart your career as a content creator.
Select Your Niche
The first, essential thing you need to do to boost your career as a content creator is to pick a niche. The niche you select forms the foundation of your content. It’s like the main topic around which you create all content that directs your primary target to you. It lets your audience know what you’re about and prompts them to follow you. Additionally, it enables you to identify the audience you’ll be speaking to.
There are various niches available for content creation. You only need to take your time and pick the one you’re comfortable with and passionate about.
Staying ahead in your niche also involves the use of technology, For instance, you may want to improve your services using general contractor software like those developed by companies like Jobber. Such software enables you to:
- Keep track of quote history
- Access job and customer info in one place
- Track time in the field
- Quickly turn a quote into a job
- Provide monthly financing options to customers
- Enable clients to request work online at their convenience
- Efficiently organize multiple crews
The list above only bears examples. There’s so much more you can do with an efficient software. You can even create and download customized invoices for any job using a free contractor invoice template.
When you finally have your eyes on a niche and know fairly well how you can keep up with competition, then you’re off to a good start.
Identify Your Target Audience
Determining your target audience is the key to creating premium content. Generally, you won’t create content that catches everyone’s attention. When you have specific people to speak to, you can formulate strategies with higher chances of succeeding because you can meet the needs of your audience.
You may want to know the audience’s age range, educational level, gender, location, what they like and enjoy, and more. All this information enables you to generate specifically tailored content that addresses their needs. Once you know who your audience is, you can do your analysis to find out what content is more popular with them. Generally, you can attract as many people as you can. In 2021, around 130 million global creators had audiences between 1,000 and 10,000 followers.
In addition, you can identify a problem or challenge your audience is facing and use the information to create content that offers a solution.
Be Creative
Creativity plays a substantial role in content generation. It ensures your content is as original as possible. Unique content is more likely to capture the attention of potential viewers. Fresh creative content and ideas rooted in the requirements of your target audience stand out and give you a competitive advantage. There are ways to be innovative in content generation. Here are some:
- Concentrate on your audience’s needs
- Check out your competitors
- Hold regular brainstorming sessions
- Stay away for some thinking time
- Focus on the human element by listening, absorbing, and observing the world around you
- Look at different industries to learn and find new and unique content ideas and points
Tools like Hemingway App and Jasper.ai can accelerate your creativity to the next level.
Keep Your Content Updated
The importance of updated content in your career can never be underestimated. It helps build trust between you and your audience. Most probably, your viewers rely on you for helpful information on whatever niche you’re in. They’d want to know the current trends, industrial innovations, solutions to existing problems in the field, and many more. By providing such content, you stay relevant and keep your audience connected to you.
Furthermore, it enables you to stay ahead of the competition. Fresh content gives you a competitive edge. It makes visitors feel your site is trustworthy, and they can share your content or refer you to their friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues. Therefore, to overcome competition, ensure the content you generate is not only of high quality but also resonates with current events.
Sign Up For a Course
Enrolling in a training program can significantly help you jumpstart your career as a content creator. It equips you with practical knowledge and skills you can apply in your content creation. For instance, through your course, you may acquire skills such as planning, research, content creation, editing, and data analysis that can improve your career.
Moreover, gaining additional knowledge can help boost your confidence to succeed. It gives you a positive mindset that keeps you focused on your goals. Being in a classroom allows you to grow your social network as well. You get the opportunity to interact with other content creators who can help you advance your career.
Create Your Content Regularly
Creating your content regularly lets you stay relevant and in touch with your target audience. Your viewers want to check your content regularly. If you don’t meet their needs, you’ll disappoint them and may end up losing them as it’s easy for them to tune out.
On the other hand, if you generate your content consistently, you keep your audience engaged. You give them a reason to stick around and wait for your new content. You may develop a routine of creating and sharing content on particular days or weeks. This conditions your viewers on when to expect new content from you.
Aside from that, regular content creation keeps you on top of the minds of your viewers, boosts search engine optimization, and improves customer satisfaction. You can use tools like FrontPageMetrics, Google AdWords Keyword Planner, and Soovle to improve your content planning skills.
Set Achievable Goals
Setting goals is essential in content creation as they can steer growth and help you concentrate on content that’s helpful to your audience. Without clear goals, you may post content with little engagement. Consider writing down your weekly or monthly goals. Doing so increases your odds of attaining them by 44%.
Ideally, goals give you short-term motivation and long-term vision. They help you concentrate on obtaining knowledge and organize your time and resources to make the best out of your career and boost it. To set goals that can help you grow your career:
- Write them as precisely as possible
- Develop a plan to achieve them
- Weigh your long- and short-term goals
- Be precise
- Have a deadline
- Review and adjust
When goals are clear and achievable, it’s easy to identify strategies that’ll take you steps closer to success.
Choose Platforms to Share Your Content
Social media is the most cost-effective and excellent tool for sharing content. This is where you can find most of the world’s population. According to data collected in 2021, more than 4.26 billion people were using social media globally, a figure forecasted to increase to approximately 6 billion by 2027.
However, with the various social media platforms, you need to identify the ones where you can find most of your audience. Consider the popular ones like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. However, you don’t need to appear on all the channels. This helps you save time and energy and expand your career in the direction you need.
Keep Track of the KPIs in Your Niche
Key performance indicators (KPIs) give you an idea of whether your content yields the desired results. They help you understand whether your target audience is viewing, engaging, or resonating with your content. Besides that, they let you know if you’re using the appropriate content distribution platforms and if your audience finds these worthwhile. Once you understand this, you can work to create valuable content that boosts audience engagement, generating more leads.
Some KPIs to keep track of in your strategy to optimize your content include:
Unique Visits
This is the most common measure of the number of people who viewed your content within a particular time. This gives you a baseline for comparing the various forms of content with time and knowing the area to focus on more.
Session-to-contact Rate
It’s inspiring to see organic traffic pouring in when you post your content. However, you need to ensure the traffic is appropriate. You can do this by evaluating your contact conversion rate. To measure this, divide new contacts by the total website sessions.
Page Views
A high number of page views indicates that your content is valuable and your audience is engaged
Social Media Traffic
This is the number of people who access your content through social media platforms
Social Sharing
When you make your content shareable, you can quickly know its performance by determining the number of people who share it on their platforms.
Geckoboard and Zoho are handy KPI tracking tools you could acquire to streamline the process.
Conclusion
Content creation is among the new jobs that have emerged. If you desire to join this field, you must devise strategic ways to succeed in your career. The above guide provides you with various methods. Feel free to go through it, jumpstart your career, and finally earn as a content creator.
