How to go from journalist to content marketer (in five easy steps!)

To many journalists, the notions of “content” and “content marketing” are likely strange and confusing. Journalists don’t think of themselves as creating “content”. They write articles, produce stories and edit newspapers.

But the journey from “journalist” to “content marketer” is not as far as you might think. Here’s how you can make the transition.

Why content marketing?

Content solves a problem. It creates a bridge between what people need and the services your organization offers – helping to ease the transition from “reader” to “customer” without resorting to the hard sell that all of us hate.

Example: say you have squirrels in your attic (I mean this literally, of course). You punch it into Google looking for advice. Wouldn’t that be a great place, if you were a local pest control company, to have a blog post on getting vermin out of your attic?

Multiply that by the number of Google searches you make, Twitter posts you read and newsletters you receive in the course of a day. You’ll start to get the idea of why creating blog posts, infographics, videos and white papers that reach people at the right time and in the right place is an essential business strategy.

OK, so where do I sign up?

Here’s the good news: The basic skills of journalists are excellent material for molding excellent content marketers. At a recent IABC Ottawa event, the panelists identified great writing as the number one key to being a great content marketing.

Writing in plain language and getting right to the point are ideal skills to bring along with you. Have experience quickly cutting up video for the 6 p.m. news run? You'd be a highly-valued content marketer.

But with a few refinements, you can make the transition in no time.

Put the user first: You’re no longer writing for the standard dirt farmer in Red Deer. You’re writing for someone specific: A person who wants to know more about content marketing or someone looking for a great place to eat in downtown Ottawa.

Try to think like the person you are trying to reach with a particular blog post. What would they search for on Google? What photo would make them want to click on your Twitter post? What problem are they trying to solve?

By forming a well-defined picture of who your audience is you can build content that delivers exactly what they need through the channels they are already on.

Write to keywords: Your days of writing vague headlines are over. Now you write in keywords.

Think about the key phrase that your content is discussing. Then, put it in the headline and first paragraph.

“A matter of fairness” would likely leave readers (and search engines) confused about what you’re writing on. “Universal basic income would help create fairness” leaves little doubt about what your subject is and what you have to say about it.

Break up your page: The white space is your friend! Write short sentences and paragraphs. Add photos and pullquotes. Make a video. Create subheads. Make it as easy as possible for the user to absorb what you want them to know.

Do anything but create a huge, long, gargantuan block of text.

Write for mobile: People search for content in all sorts of distracting places. Maybe they’re driving around the city trying to find a veterinarian. Or maybe they have to find out if they can park on a particular street at a particular time at night.

This is not an ideal location to read a 2,000-word think-piece on the merits of your municipality’s parking policy.

Make it easy on your reader by getting to the point with short, declarative sentences. Great mobile writing makes for great writing. Period.

Think strategically: You no longer write stand-alone articles. You write content that is one small step in moving a person along a path to a particular goal. Think about how your individual blog post works with what else your website is offering to help “drive conversions”. (I know, I know: jargon. Basically it means trying to get your user to do something such as buy a product or sign up for a newsletter).

Going from journalist to content creator is not as difficult as you might think. A few tweaks to how you write and think should put you on the path to an effective career in content marketing.

Mark Brownlee is a journalist-turned content creator, inbound marketer and communicator. He previously reported for the Ottawa Business Journal, the Ottawa Citizen, the Canadian Press and the CBC.