6 Ways to Pursue Your Career as a Content Creator

6 Ways to Pursue Your Career as a Content Creator

“Being creative” doesn't pay the bills.

Being a content creator isn't about “out-of-the-box ideas”; it's a business model built on a single, non-negotiable asset: audience trust.

This isn't a list of “exciting” career paths. It's a strategic breakdown of how to turn your creativity into a profitable enterprise by solving an expensive problem for a specific audience.

Forget being a “star.” This is a guide to building a real business.

What is a Content Creator?

A content creator is a professional who creates digital content in different forms – written, audio, and video.

Professional content creators produce digital content for websites, blogs, and social media platforms. They develop great ideas to create educational and exciting content for their target audience.

Content creators can find jobs in agencies, startup companies, and established enterprises, work as influencers, and start their freelance careers.

Hundreds of successful digital content creators have built a massive following on social media platforms, and many established brands are hiring them to create digital content for marketing channels.

Responsibilities of a Content Creator

Being a content creator, you are responsible for producing content for diverse platforms, depending on the type of business and audience you are working for. If you are wondering what a job description of a content creator is and what content creators do, here are the tasks content creators usually perform:

• Develop a content plan
• Manage a content calendar
• Come up with exciting content ideas
• Create videos, photos, and graphics
• Record videos
• Edit visuals
• Produce podcasts
• Launch online courses and training programs to educate an audience
• Guest post writing
• Consulting for small businesses, startups, and established brands
• Collaborate with brands to create sponsored posts
• Perform basic SEO tasks

Discovering Different Types of Content Creators

These are the most common types of digital content creators:

• Influencers or Brand Ambassadors
• Content Writers
• Social Media Managers
• Videographer
• Podcast Creators
• Vloggers
• Photographers
• Designers/Artists

Influencers or Brand Ambassadors

Content creators with hyper-engaged social media followings and substantial online reputations can work as influencers and brand ambassadors. Influencers create content for brands to promote their products or services.

They create videos to show their audience how to use a particular product or service.

Today, brands heavily invest in influencer marketing to reach a target audience and promote their products and services. You can create a variety of content for your personal brand.

Influencers can monetise their brand by creating valuable content, taking photos, and capturing engaging videos. An influencer is responsible for performing these tasks:

• Create YouTube videos
• Go live on social media platforms
• Arranging webinars
• Hosting podcasts
• Writing blog posts
• Offer tutorials and online classes

Content Writers

To become a content writer, you must understand that writers create various digital content. Content writers develop content from writing web copy to creating content for blogs, brochures, e-books, email marketing copy, press releases, voice-over scripts, and white papers.

Social Media Managers

Social media managers create engaging posts to attract followers and increase user engagement. As a digital or social media manager, you manage a brand and create a positive social media presence for a brand, product or individual.

Social media managers create marketing campaigns for brands across different digital marketing networks. A social media manager, also called a community manager, uses social media metrics and paid analytics tools to measure the social media presence of a brand.

Videographers

Video is the most effective type of content that you can use to engage with the target audience and build a loyal customer base. As a videographer, you must develop killer ideas to create content that perfectly fits the brand's mission.

You can create how-to, explainer, promotional, and product videos to increase your brand's organic reach across social media platforms.

Videographers can create exciting video content for websites, blogs, eCommerce stores and social media campaigns.

Podcast Creators

Content creators can work as a podcaster or podcast creators who produce podcasts. It is a new and exciting way to introduce your product or service to a new audience.

You can choose a topic of interest and create podcast episodes to educate your audience. You can upload the podcast episode to your website or different podcast platforms like Google, Apple, and SoundCloud.

Vloggers

Vloggers or video bloggers are content creators who create informative and inspiring video content on diverse topics. They work for their video blog or provide exciting video content for brands.

As a vlogger, you arrange online Q&A sessions, participate in group discussions, host interviews, and create films on the latest topics.

Photographers

You can work as a photographer if you are good at capturing photos. Creating unique and professional photos for different media is an art. Photographers create inspiring visual content for brands to strengthen their image and business reputation.

Publishing your stunning photography collection allows you to attract a massive audience on social media and build and sustain loyal followers.

Designers/Artists

Designers and artists are visual content creators who know how to create conceptually compelling images that tell a story in an inspiring manner.

These individuals know how to use different design elements like colours, fonts, and illustrations to produce visually striking content that communicates the right message.

Skills You Need to Become a Content Creator

• Research skills
• Storytelling
• Creative skills
• Communication skills
• Strategic mindset
• Organisational skills
• Quick learner

Learning Some Easy Ways to Become a Content Creator

Choose a Niche

If you have decided to pursue your career as a content creator and are ready to create content, it's the right time to identify your interests. Figure out what interests you more, such as fashion, finance, sports, games, current affairs, travel, or music. Choose the topic that you like most and have in-depth knowledge of.

Content creation isn't about writing long-form blogs, web copy or creating magical videos. The core of content creation is knowledge, research skills and creative ideas. You will become a successful content creator when you choose a specialised niche or genre with existing knowledge and expertise.

If you are interested in a particular field but don't have professional expertise, don't worry. Keep trying and share your struggling story with your audience. Choosing a specific niche will help you create relevant content for a target audience, attract more followers and build an engaged community.

Choose a Content-Format, Type and Platform

Once you know the niche or topic to create content for, you must choose the proper content format to share your knowledge. Decide what you want to do and what content you want to share.

Whether writing web copy or blog posts, captions for social media posts, digital ad copy, filming videos, capturing photos, creating visual content, or producing podcasts. Choosing the content format will give you a clear idea of what content creator you want to become.

Choose a content platform that best suits the content type you will be working on. Fortunately, there are a variety of digital platforms that content creators can work on.

From Instagram to YouTube, TikTok, websites, and company blogs – to name a few. Your content platform choice is based on the needs of the brand you are working for and the type of content they want you to produce to promote their services or products.

Right, here's where most creators get it wrong. They think they can just chuck the same content everywhere and hope for the best. Doesn't work like that, mate.

Each platform has its own rules, and you've got to play by them if you want to get anywhere. Instagram loves square posts at 1080×1080 pixels, but your stories need to be 1080×1920. YouTube wants 1920×1080 for videos, and here's the thing – videos between 7 and 15 minutes perform best because that's the sweet spot for ad revenue.

TikTok's all about that 9:16 vertical format, and you want to keep things snappy between 15 and 60 seconds. LinkedIn's more professional, obviously, so tone it down a notch and use 1200×627 for any images you share. Twitter's still got that 280-character limit, though you can go longer with threads now.

Polish Your Skills

Whether you want to become a content creator, vlogger, social media manager, influencer, or graphic designer, you must develop your skills by enrolling in online courses. For instance, pursuing online courses in digital marketing and content creation will help you gain expertise in a particular field.

You can follow successful content creators in your field to brush up on your skills and produce quality content for your target audience. Studying from experts will help you understand how to work in the content creation industry, how to write content for different platforms and build an engaged audience.

Learning how to create engaging content for your target audience will help you develop more unique ideas. Producing exciting content regularly will help you improve the quality of your content. Remember, the more you create, the better you become.

For instance, if you struggle to make short-form videos, create videos regularly to master the art of video making. Commit to creating content regularly to polish your skills. Improving your skills will help create an engaged audience and encourage brands to hire you as a content creator and promote their products or services.

Legal and Business Bits You Can't Ignore

Look, I get it. Legal stuff is as boring as watching paint dry. But ignore this at your peril because it'll come back to bite you when you least expect it.

First up, FTC guidelines. If someone's paying you or giving you free stuff to talk about their product, you need to disclose it. Use #ad or #sponsored at the beginning of your posts. Don't try to hide it in a sea of hashtags, that's just asking for trouble.

Copyright's another minefield. You can't just nick someone else's music or images because you found them on Google. Use royalty-free stuff from sites like Unsplash or Pexels, or buy proper licences. Fair use exists, but it's not as broad as most people think.

If you're making proper money from this, you need to register as a business. Set up as a sole trader or limited company, depending on your situation. Keep track of your expenses because you can claim back loads of stuff – your camera, editing software, even a portion of your home office costs.

Contracts matter when you're working with brands. Don't just do handshake deals over Instagram DMs. Get everything in writing – what you're creating, when it's due, how much you're getting paid, and what happens if things go wrong.

Create a Strong Content Creation Strategy

A strong content creation strategy is vital to create better-performing content that can attract people and encourage them to become your followers. A content creation plan allows you to create, publish, distribute, and promote content.

Creating a content plan will help you maintain consistency in your content publishing and distribution plan. It allows creators to focus on their goals and streamline content marketing efforts.

With the help of a content plan, you can identify exciting topics your audience wants to read. It helps you choose the proper distribution and marketing channels to promote your content to the right audience.

Most importantly, a great content creation plan enables you to perform in-depth research, conduct online surveys, create audience polls, do social listening, and get valuable insights to improve the quality of content.

Make sure you incorporate the trending keywords in your content to increase its chances of getting a higher ranking on search engine page results. Whether you create long-form blog posts, website content, social media captions, write video descriptions or implement the right keywords to make it worthwhile for the target audience.

The thing is, creating content without measuring performance is like driving with your eyes closed. You need to know what's working and what isn't.

Engagement rate is your most important metric. It's likes, comments, and shares divided by your total followers, times 100. Anything above 3% is decent, and above 6% is brilliant. Don't get hung up on vanity metrics like follower count if nobody's actually engaging with your stuff.

Reach versus impressions tells you different things. Reach is how many unique people saw your content, and impressions are total views, including multiple views from the same person. If impressions are much higher than reach, your content's good enough that people are viewing it multiple times.

Click-through rates matter if you're trying to drive traffic somewhere. Track how many people actually click your links versus how many see them. Most platforms give you these stats in their creator dashboards.

Google Analytics is free and shows you exactly how people behave on your website. Which pages they visit, how long they stay, and where they came from. Set up conversion tracking if you're selling anything.

Build an Engaged Community

To become a successful content creator, you must build an engaged community of followers and fans. Create new, unique, engaging content ideas that instantly grab your followers' attention and encourage them to interact with the posts, like, share and support content.

You can create how-to videos, educational posts and entertaining content like carousel posts, reels, memes, and long-form content to tell your brand story. Content creators can engage with their community in real time by going live.

During the live session, you can ask for their opinion on a particular topic, ask about their pain points, and encourage them to share their stories, images or videos associated with your brand. You can announce a special discount and mega sale offer, respond to their comments and collect valuable feedback.

Remember, listening to what your target audience wants to learn and their problems will help you create a solid content marketing strategy for your personal brand.

How to Actually Make Money From Your Content

Right, let's talk brass tacks. You can have millions of followers, but if you're not making money, you're just running an expensive hobby.

Affiliate marketing's probably the easiest place to start. You promote other people's stuff and get a commission when someone buys through your link. Amazon Associates is simple enough, but the commissions are rubbish. Look for higher-paying programmes in your niche.

Sponsored content's where the real money is. Brands will pay you to create posts about their products. The general rule of thumb is £10-100 per 1,000 followers, but rates vary massively depending on your niche and engagement.

Subscription platforms like Patreon or OnlyFans let your most dedicated fans pay you monthly. You give them exclusive content or early access to your stuff. It's recurring revenue, which is brilliant for planning your finances.

Don't overlook digital products. Online courses on platforms like Teachable or Udemy can make you serious money. Once you've created the course, it sells itself whilst you sleep.

Platform monetisation is getting better, too. YouTube Partner Program shares ad revenue once you hit 1,000 subscribers. TikTok Creator Fund pays based on views, though the rates aren't amazing. Instagram's Reels Play Bonus programme is invitation-only but worth applying for.

Invest in Content Tools

Fortunately, many content tools are available to make the lives of content creators easier. Investing in essential content tools is a sensible approach to polishing your skills and developing more refined and exceptional pieces of content.

With the advent of advanced content creation tools, it has become easier for creators to create, plan, and promote content.

Using the right content creation tools allows creators to get valuable insights and craft exciting content that performs outstandingly.

If you want to improve your content strategy and create killer content for your target audience, here is a list of the best content creation tools:

• CoSchedule Headline Studio
• Grammarly
• BuzzSumo
• Canva
• Giphy
• AnswerThePublic
• Copy.ai
• Demio
• Audacity
• Visme
• HitFilm
• Buffer
• Burst
• Otter
• Anchor
• Riddle
• Typeform
• Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects)
• Final Cut Pro
• Hootsuite
• Later
• Mailchimp
• Google Analytics
• Unsplash
• Pexels
• Loom
• OBS Studio
• Trello

Are You Ready to Become a Professional Content Creator?

Pursuing a career as a content creator is one of the best career choices for those who are creative enough and possess good writing skills.

Pursuing some online courses, following successful content creators, and using the best content creation tools will make starting your journey as a content creator easier.

Hopefully, the ways mentioned above will help you build a career as a successful and creative content creator and make you stand out in the content creation industry.