When I started in content marketing, I had a severe case of imposter syndrome. I was a writer interviewing musicians about their latest singles and writing stories about the hottest new restaurant around the block.
But the world changed fast for writers and traditional marketers alike. While the medium—the written word—stayed the same, the assignment changed. We no longer wrote for ourselves or an engaged audience, we wrote on behalf of brands trying to capture a distracted market.
So like many professions affected by technology and the speed of change, we had to pivot. The journey had its ups and downs and offered many learnings along the way.
We decided to round up the team and collate some of the most important learnings we’ve had about content marketing so far.
“Writing is just the medium, while content marketing is the engine”
Many of us thrust into the content marketing scene were, naturally, writers.
Mike Aquino, our managing editor, was an advertising copywriter and feature writer for lifestyle and travel magazines before he got into content marketing.
But there are also times when “writer brain” can get in the way of good content marketing. Our content strategist Jolene Hee said that her time in lifestyle media helped her “write with pizzazz,” but she had to learn how to tone it down for a serious B2B audience.
So while being good at writing is a necessary skill in any content marketer’s arsenal, it’s important to reel in that part of our brain that wants to use words like “plethora” or “myriad”. One of the biggest sins in content marketing is to exchange clarity with cleverness; to prioritize beautiful language over getting straight to the point. The goal, after all, is to create something useful for your audience.
Empathy and adaptability are vital in content marketing
Another important quality of a good content marketer is empathy, or your ability to understand your client’s products, services, and brand positioning as well as your audience’s wants, needs, and pain points. As content marketers, we put ourselves in other people’s shoes all the time.
We’ve written extensively about this in previous Rise editions [Read: Rise #6 Where pleasure meets pain (it’s not what you think)], so we won’t get too much into that. But I did want to reiterate because this was an important learning in the transition from writer to content marketer.
With that said, practicing empathy is no easy task, especially when you’re working with complex products and services.
Especially in today’s fast-paced, digital world where articles are born by the minute, timeliness is of the essence. No one is publishing award-winning content to market their products on a daily basis. Let’s be real, your audience probably won’t even read everything you wrote.
Instead, focus on consistency; delivering concise, helpful content regularly will increase your chances of building brand awareness, generating leads, increasing SERP rankings, earning industry authority, and creating loyal brand advocates.
That’s not to say we don’t prioritize writing unique stories or editing our content thoroughly before they make it online. According to the 13th annual B2B Content Marketing report, producing better quality content (83%) and covering topics that competitors aren’t covering (72%) were top priorities for content creators in 2023.
It’s just a common pitfall among new content marketers to aim for perfection or try and appeal to all stakeholders at the risk of the piece going stale, or worse, never seeing the light of day. Content doesn’t have to be “perfect” to serve its purpose.
Tackling the unknown waters of Southeast Asia
Becoming a content marketer in this new age, especially in Southeast Asia where it’s still a relatively new field, is a game of trial and error. We’ve learned a lot of things over the years—including the fact that imposter syndrome only goes away with time and experience. The more mistakes you make, the clearer the path towards good content marketing becomes.
As Mike said, transitioning from writer to content marketer is just a matter of doing the assignment.
Our task now—and something that honestly might still give us all imposter syndrome—is to level up content marketing in Southeast Asia.
It sounds like a huge undertaking, but we’re up for the task. And we’re so glad you’re on this boat with us.
Let’s raise the bar of content marketing in Southeast Asia
We hope you enjoy Rise and find this newsletter helpful. (Read our past editions here.)
And if you do, why not share it with a friend?
Thanks for reading!
⛵
Nikki
With help from Kat
