How to Become a Content Marketing Specialist (10 Steps)

This guide will show you exactly how to become a content marketing specialist.

I’ve been working as a content marketing manager for the last 20 years, and in this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about starting a career in content marketing.

I will explain what a content marketing specialist is, what skills are needed to become one, what jobs you can get, and how much money you can make as a content marketing expert.

What is a Content Marketing Specialist?

A content specialist (also known as a “Content Marketing Specialist”) is responsible for writing, editing, and developing content for the needs of digital campaigns. Content marketing specialists work closely with SEO and digital marketing professionals to ensure that the content produced is aligned with the overall goals of a digital marketing campaign.

Depending on the skills and experience, the content marketing specialist role has different variations.

For big companies, this also defines the career path of a content marketing professional.

The most important are:

• Content Marketing Specialist - Research and write content.
• Content Marketing Strategist - Designing the company's overall content marketing strategy.
• Content Marketing Manager or Content Marketing Director - Responsible for the smooth running of the content marketing department.
• Content Marketer and Content Marketing Expert - professionals with years of experience in content marketing campaigns. May work in a company or as a freelancer.
• Content Marketing Consultant - Established content marketing experts who provide consultancy on how businesses can use content marketing to increase their traffic and sales.

What Skills Should a Content Marketing Specialist Know?

To become a content marketing specialist, you need to have the following qualifications and skills:

College degree - Optional if you plan to work as a freelancer, but a requirement if you want to work in a company. Usually, a Bachelor’s degree in marketing, journalism, or communications is required.

Content marketing certification - Optional but can increase your chances of finding a job when you have no experience or success stories to showcase in your CV. The best way to get certified is to follow a content marketing course.

Writing skills - A large portion of your time will be spent in content writing (whether this is blog posts, video scripts, or ad copies), and thus, it is important to have basic writing skills and, of course, enjoy writing!

Keyword research skills - Writing for the web starts with a keyword. To succeed as a content specialist, you need to know how to do keyword research to find out the content needs of online users so that you can create content to satisfy their intent.

Basic SEO skills - If you work as part of a content marketing or digital marketing team, then most probably, the SEO specialist will take care of optimizing the content for the web, but it is necessary to have some basic SEO skills.

If you plan to work as a copywriter or content marketing freelancer, you must know how SEO blog writing works and how to create SEO-optimized content.

Web analytical skills are critical for content marketing managers and consultants. They know how to analyze the data and effectiveness of a campaign, and how to create reports to present their findings to the management or clients.

How Do You Become a Content Specialist?

1. Understand what content marketing is and how it works
2. Improve your writing skills
3. Learn how to use content marketing tools
4. Master the keyword research process
5. Learn SEO copywriting
6. Start your own blog
7. Apply to work in a digital marketing agency
8. Work as a content marketing freelancer
9. Publish your written work on reputable websites
10. Stay current with the latest trends in content marketing

1. Understand what content marketing is and how it works

To start a content marketing career, you first need to learn what content marketing is, how it works, and why it’s an essential process for all kinds of online businesses.

If you’re a beginner, you might think that content marketing is the same as blogging or writing content for the web, but it’s more than that.

Content marketing is an ongoing process that involves understanding your target audience and creating the correct type of content to satisfy their intent at different stages of their journey.

So, as a content specialist, your job is not just to throw words on a page and hit the publish button but to ensure that whatever you write or create has a specific purpose and goal.

To do that, you need to know the bigger picture, which is the driving force behind any online marketing campaign, and this is digital marketing.

A company's digital marketing strategy will define the content needs of each channel participating in a campaign. The digital marketing manager designs the strategy, and the content marketing manager implements it with content.

These roles are clearly defined in big companies, but if you work in a small team or freelancer, you’ll have to play both roles.

So, if you want to get into content marketing and gradually advance from a content marketing specialist to a content strategist or even a digital marketing expert, you need to learn digital marketing and not just how to create content for the web.

2. Improve your writing skills

As a content marketing specialist, you’ll be asked to write content for different audiences and content platforms. To execute this task successfully, you need to have good writing skills.

This means good knowledge of the English language (or the target language of your audience) and the ability to write content free of spelling and grammar mistakes.

From experience, this is a skill that can be improved through practice. Some people are born to be writers and can produce great content with minimum effort, but for others, it's a tedious task.

The best way to learn how to write better content is to read other blogs or books related to your chosen niche and do a lot of writing.

In the beginning, it may take 3-4 hours to write 1000 words, but as you become more experienced, this rate will dramatically improve.

3. Learn how to use content marketing tools

If you want to be a content specialist, you MUST know how to use tools.

In fact, experience with tools is so important that most content marketing related job postings list “experience with content marketing tools” as a requirement:

There are a lot of tools in the market, and each company uses its own set of marketing tools, but some tools/platforms are common to all like:

• Microsoft Office Products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Google G Suite Products (Docs, Sheets, etc.)
• Google Analytics
• Google Trends
• Google Keyword Tool
• Google Data Studio
• Google Search Console
• Grammarly
• WordPress

Other popular tools that most companies and freelancers use are:

• SEMRUSH
• Ahrefs
• BuzzSumo
• Moz
• HubSpot
• MailChimp

The best way to learn a tool is to use it in real-life scenarios, and you can easily do that with free tools like Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google Keyword Tool, and WordPress.

Other premium tools, like Semrush, have several resources and online courses to help you learn how to use them.

4. Master the keyword research process

A skill that you definitely need to master is topic and keyword research. The outcome of keyword research is used in all stages of the content marketing lifecycle.

From campaign design to creating the actual content, keywords play a vital role in a campaign's success or failure.

To give you an idea of what we mean by keyword and topic research, here is an outline of the process:

Find content topic ideas - Through researching your competitors and using a number of tools, you create a list of topics that are aligned with your digital marketing goals.

Perform keyword research - You analyze each topic in detail and find out the actual search terms people use when searching for your topics on search engines, social media platforms, and forums.

Examine the user intent - For each of the keywords identified from keyword research, find out what kind of content you need to create to satisfy the user's intent.

A great way to learn keyword research fast is to follow a good course like the ones listed below.

5. Learn SEO copywriting

As a content marketing specialist, you don’t have to be an SEO expert, but you need excellent SEO copywriting skills. SEO copywriting is the process of writing content that search engines can understand.

There are various techniques you can use while writing for the web to help search engine spiders understand what your content is all about.

This does not mean stuffing keywords into your copy but using keywords intelligently to make your writing friendlier to both users and search engines.

The most important SEO writing principles are:

• Adding your main keywords in the page title
• Including keywords in the page URL
• Mentioning your keywords in the opening paragraph
• Adding related keywords in your section headings
• Adding LSI keywords in your content
• Adding relevant ALT text to images
• Linking to other pages of your site using optimized anchor text
• Linking to other authoritative websites

When you apply the above principles while writing the content of a page, you increase your chances of achieving high search engine rankings for your desired keywords.

You need to know how SEO copywriting works, even if you’re not the person writing the content.

As a content marketing manager or consultant, you must review and approve content before publication.

6. Start your own blog

One of the most efficient ways to learn any digital marketing discipline, including SEO and content marketing, is to practice.

Through a course, you can learn the theory and go through examples. Senior content marketing professionals in your team can help you with the process, but the best way to find out what you really know is to start a website and publish content.

Creating your own blog will benefit you in several ways:

• It’s a great way to practice what you have learned in a course
• By writing, you will gradually improve your skills and become faster and better
• It’s a great way to showcase your skills to potential clients or employers
• It’s a great way to make money online
• You’ll have a website to experiment with different SEO techniques and tools

In addition, when applying to work as a freelance writer, potential clients will need to see samples of your work.

If you have no other experience, showing blogs from your website will help you secure the job.

7. Apply to work in a digital marketing agency

Digital marketing agencies are always looking for good content specialists. I know this from experience. In our agency, we’re always searching for passionate content marketing specialists, and sometimes, we consider applications even if we don’t have any job openings.

There are many advantages of working in a digital marketing agency regardless of your experience and job title:

If you’re starting now, you’ll see how content marketing works in real-life scenarios - Established agencies have processes in place and dedicated job roles for each task, which will help you understand how content marketing works.

You can advance the ladder and make more money - You may get an entry-level job as a content marketing specialist and become a content strategist and eventually a content marketing manager.

If you don’t want to work for an employer but want to become your own boss, why not start your own digital marketing agency? It’s not easy if you’re new to digital marketing, but it’s not impossible.

8. Work as a content marketing freelancer

One of the most popular ways to start a career in content marketing is to become a content writer and freelancer.

If you search job posting sites like FlexiJobs, UpWork, and Problogger Job Board, you’ll see hundreds of jobs related to content writing. It’s perhaps the most wanted job in the market today.

What are the benefits of becoming a content marketing freelancer?

• You’ll earn money and, depending on how fast you can work, a lot of money.
• You can work from home.
• You can build references for your CV if you decide to work for a company or agency.
• You’ll build the skills and experience needed to secure bigger projects.
• It’s the first step in setting up your content marketing agency.

Here are three tips for you:1.

As mentioned above, when you apply for a job, you’ll be asked to provide samples of your previous work, so ensure that you publish some great articles on your blog.

2. Apply for job postings fast and provide accurate information. When you post a content marketing related job on any site, you get hundreds of responses in a matter of hours. To increase your chances of being considered for the job, reply quickly and answer any questions precisely.

3. Be prepared to participate in a pilot project. Before hiring a content marketer, employers ask for writing samples on their chosen topics, so be prepared to accept the invitation and deliver the work fast.

9. Publish your written work on reputable websites

To differentiate yourself from other content marketing specialists and become a true expert, you must get published by reputable websites.

Publishing content on your own blog is great, but that limits your reach and reputation to your blog audience.

Companies and clients want to work with professionals who are recognized as experts in their field, and one way to do this is to get featured on well-known and big websites.

For example, if your work is published in Forbes, Entrepreneur, or other popular publications, it will be very easy for you to get hired by a company or get paid a higher rate for your work as a freelancer.

The process is not easy, hundreds of people need to be featured on famous websites but it can really make a huge difference in your career.

Here are some tips that helped me get featured on websites like the Content Marketing Institute.

1. Find websites that accept contributions from guest authors. You can easily find them by searching Google for terms like “Write for Us”, “Blog Contributors”, “Guest Post Authors”

2. Start by pitching less popular websites than Forbes or CMI. Your goal at this stage is to build references so that you can gradually apply to bigger websites.

3. Read their requirements carefully and apply to become a guest author.

4. Once accepted, write your best content and send it for approval.

5. Once you have a couple of published articles, try to find out the details (email, Twitter, LinkedIn) of authors and editors of the sites you want to be featured.

6. Connect with them on Twitter and LinkedIn, read their author requirements carefully, and send your pitch.

Some will not even reply, but a few will give you a chance to send them a sample.

If the above process sounds like too much work, it’s because it is, but in the end, it can make a huge difference in how much you can get paid, especially if you work as a freelancer.

Writers with a good reputation may get paid $2000 for a 2000-word article, compared to $300 for writers who have not tried to promote their personal brand.

10. Stay current with the latest trends in content marketing

If you ask any successful content marketing expert what is important to do daily to survive in the industry, they will tell you to stay informed of the latest trends in content marketing and digital marketing in general.

The digital marketing industry is not static, but it’s continuously evolving. New content platforms have risen to the surface, SEO ranking factors are changing, and you need to follow these changes to become more than just a content writer.

The best way to do this is to follow websites that cover the changes in our industry. If something is happening, you’ll be the first to know it. These are the websites that I follow and visit daily:

• Content Marketing Institute
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Land
• ThinkWithGoogle
• Google Blog

How Much Do Content Marketing Specialists Make?

The average salary of a content marketing specialist is between $35K and $62K per year. This can rise to $59K-$139K for a content marketing director.

The salary of content marketing professionals depends on three factors: skills, experience, and location.

According to payscale.com, the average annual salary of content marketing professionals per job role is the following:

• An online marketing content writer, copywriter, and web content specialist typically makes between $35k and $72k.
• A Content Marketer typically makes between $36k - $81k.
• A content strategist typically makes between $41k and $95k.
• A content marketing manager typically makes between $46k and $98k.
• A Content Marketing Director typically makes between $59k - $139k.

Content Marketing Expert Jobs

Searching for “Content marketing jobs” on popular sites like FlexiJobs, Payscale, and Glassdoor will get several marketing jobs with different titles.

To avoid confusion, these are the most popular content marketing job types and their meaning.

Web Content Specialist / Content Writer / Content Marketing Specialist - They seek writers who can write, edit, and develop website content.

Content Strategists - Content strategists typically develop a content marketing plan and oversee a team of content writers.

Content Marketing Managers / Content Marketing Directors - Responsible for designing a content marketing strategy and coordinating with other teams (SEO team, social media management team).

Key Learnings

Becoming a content marketing specialist is a great career option. Content marketing professionals can work from home as freelancers, start their own digital marketing agency, work for a digital agency, or work in any content marketing business.

The process is straightforward and can be summarized in three steps:

• Learn how to write great content that online audiences will love to read.
• Improve your analytical skills and learn how to use content marketing tools.
• Build your portfolio and establish yourself as a content marketing expert.

When you do the above, you can get a job at any level of the ladder and earn a good salary for doing what you love.