What Are Content Creators?

Whether you’re in the marketing industry or are looking for a career change, you may not be aware of what content creators do or why they’re essential to the smooth-running of any business. From marketing agencies to an in-house team of people who look after a blog and social networking, content creators are everywhere. Without them, you don’t have a website, you don’t have a blog and you don’t have anything engaging to grab your audiences’ attention. But what is a content creator, exactly, what do they do and how do they do it? Let’s take a closer look.

What is a content creator?

A content creator is just that – a person who creates content. Content creators exist in a number of capacities. There will be a team of content creators who work for marketing agencies, but there will also be content creators who work in-house, producing content for the business they work for. You don’t need to work in marketing to be a content creator. 

Content creators are an essential part of any company, no matter the industry. Whether you make content for an abundance of industries, as you would working for a digital marketing agency, or for just one industry, such as a company that sells window blinds, for instance, content creators are what makes the digital world go round. 

Without them, you don’t have anything to read and you have nothing visual to look at and become engaged by. So what do content creators actually create? “Content” covers a wide range of different things, such as:

• Blog posts
• Articles
• Guides
• Listicles
• Press releases
• Infographics
• Podcasts
• Brochures
• Social media postings
• Emails
• Webinars
• Newsletters
• Annual reports
• Editorials
• Advertorial messaging
• E-commerce copy
• Product and service descriptions
• Company communications
• Posters
• Editing images and pictures
• Vlogs
• Live streams
• Magazines

Without content creators, the aforementioned wouldn’t be possible, especially if you’re looking for quality content over anything else. Quality content is essential when it comes to building reliability and credibility between yourself and your consumers. According to Veza Digital, high-quality content not only adds value to the reader, but it’s also favoured by search engines, therefore boosting rankings in the process. Content creators are key to your operations, but what are the ins and outs of content creation?

The ins & outs of content creation

Content writing isn’t just about writing an article and hitting “publish” on the content platforms. There’s far more that a content writer has to do than first meets the eye. From having to embrace the technological advances of AI to doing their bit for SEO, here are the ins and outs of content creation that you may not have known otherwise.

Content creators & AI

No matter where you look on the internet, there’s content out there that’s probably been written by someone who has been paid to create it. Most of the time, they’re highly-qualified, fully-trained and have a wealth of experience behind them. However, there are people who write simply for a hobby, because they’re good at it and they enjoy it. On the other hand, there are people who might not know how to create the quality content they need and so they will look to AI instead. 

Where AI can help with establishing the bare bones of a piece of content, it’s not usually relied on by content creators, if they had a choice. Their skills can be put in place in other ways, such as fleshing out the content or editing it to give it a more human voice. Not everything you read on the internet has been created from scratch. 

There are a number of reasons for this, but the most common reason is a lack of time. Creating original content can take time. This is because it requires research, it needs to be written up in a coherent way and it also needs to be proofread and edited. Creating an original article can take up to 3-4 hours, from beginning the end, depending on the topic and its word count. This is why some content creators will look to AI tools.

Content creators & their responsibilities

Content creation can span a number of industries, skills and responsibilities. It’s not just the creation of the content that’s included in their role. Content creation includes generating ideas, researching the topic, creating the content, proofing and editing the content and publishing that content. 

It might even include the editing of images and photographs or the production of infographics and posters. In addition, they may also be required to set up email listings, create monthly newsletters and post on social media. All of this might sound simple, but each and every piece of content requires a different production method. For example, writing a press release is different from writing something like this. 

But then writing a post on social media requires the production of micro-copy; another skill. The same goes for writing meta descriptions or content for e-commerce purposes. A new skill is applied to a different content piece. In addition, the content needs to be written with an audience in mind. 

Not only do you have to apply your training for different pieces of content, but you also need to tailor it to your target audience; another skill. It’s a common misconception that content creators do nothing but write things like this, but there’s far more to it and it’s much more involved than it looks on the face of it.

Content creators & SEO

Content creators also contribute to SEO methods and, subsequently, how well their content performs in the search engines results pages (SERPs). They do this by doing keyword research, using tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to collect their data. 

They will then have to weave those keywords and phrases into the content they’re writing, without it looking forced or stuffing their copy with those keywords. There’s a skill in implementing those keywords, and content writers are the ones who do this seamlessly. Where you still need SEO specialists in the field, content writers do have their part to play in SEO tactics and results.

Content creators & updating old content

This might sound counter-intuitive; to write something one day, publish it and then rewrite and republish it again. However, there is a method to our madness here. Content that is topical or packed with facts and figures is relevant for the first year or so, but after that, it’s no longer useful information. 

As such, content writers will often take old pieces of content and update them. Whether they’re changing the statistics to ones that are more up-to-date or adding in new keywords and phrases and removing the ones that are longer being searched for, content creators have to constantly keep the old content as relevant and as fresh as their new content. 

This often means spending hours looking back through the archives and finding articles that have slowed in terms of performance. Again, this requires even more analytical work, much like it does when it comes to doing keyword research in the first place. As well as being responsible for creating new content, content creators also have a duty to update the old stuff along the way.

5 things content creators do for the best results

We’ve already touched on the responsibilities and expectations of a content creator, together with everything they do behind the scenes and after the fact, but how do they create content that’s high-quality, in and amongst having all of those other tasks to perform? Let’s look a little deeper into the things content creators do for the best possible results online:

1. Stay current & up to date 

We’ve already touched on the importance of posting often and consistently, and that’s something that content creators do. However, on top of posting content as regularly as possible, it also needs to be up to date and relevant to the topics of today. There’s no point writing about something that happened a few weeks or months ago. 

In some cases, even writing about something a few days after it has happened is pointless. Content creators are organised, they’re current and they’re up to date with things that are on-trend. X (formerly Twitter) is a great platform to learn about what’s trending right now. If you’re looking to be an excellent content creator, then this is half the job.

2. Know their audience

There’s no point writing content if it’s not going to reach the audience you need it to reach. If you’re wanting to market a new cocktail bar, then you need to be engaging people of a certain demographic, such as students and millennials, not those who are in their 60s, for instance. 

A good content creator knows the audience they’re writing for, mainly because they’re dedicated to their research. Writing content that reaches the right target audience is what will drive traffic, increase leads and improve sales, if this is your end goal. 

Some bloggers simply need the organic website traffic in order to perform well, but again, hitting the right audience is all part of that. Either way, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

3. Use shortcut tools

As already mentioned, content creation involves more than just crafting words and putting sentences together. Often, the workload of a content creator is vast, because they do more than just write articles. Sometimes, there’s a lack of time to complete jobs and so they will use some shortcutting tools to get the job done, efficiently and without compromising on quality. 

We’ve already discussed how useful AI tools can be when it comes to writing content, and that’s just one of the shortcutting tools that content creators have at their disposal. Shortcutting doesn’t mean poor quality, it’s just a tactic content creators use to free up some time to do other things, like proofread or create supporting infographics, for example.

4. Post often & consistently

Posting as often as possible and in a consistent manner is a great way of both attracting an audience and sustaining one. It shows your followers that you’re dedicated but it also makes sure that they know what to expect from you and your blog. If it’s consistent and regular enough, you’ll soon build your audience up and you’ll retain them as well. According to the HubSpot blog, you need to be posting around 6-8 blog posts a month that focus on an important, relevant and engaging topic. 

5. Optimise for SEO

It’s the job of a content creator to optimise their content for SEO. While you still have SEo experts on hand to do the more in-depth, technical SEO tasks and research, content creators need to focus their SEO efforts on implementing keywords and phrases into their copy. They also help with SEO when it comes to writing meta descriptions, which is a simple-yet-effective method of boosting your content in the rankings.

Kumo is a dedicated digital marketing agency with over two decades of experience in the field. We have the SEO, PPC, content writing and website design knowledge and expertise needed to propel your business into the spotlight. If you would like further information about the marketing services we have available, get in touch with a member of our friendly, professional team today – we’re always pleased to hear from you.