1. An understanding of inbound marketing principles

95 percent of customers are more likely to prefer a company that provides valuable content and information. That’s why content marketing is much more than publishing content; it is about helping people solve their problems.

And for that, a thorough understanding of your target audience, from where they visit your website, how they engage with your content, where they are in the buyer’s journey, and which path they take towards completing the transaction.

Understanding these inbound marketing principles are important for content marketers, so they can provide the right type of content to the right user at the right time.

2. The ability to analyse data

A large part of any content marketing strategy depends heavily on analytics, data, metrics, and key performance indicators (KPIs). Without the ability to analyse data, identify patterns, and forecast trends, content marketers would not be able to jump on opportunities before their competitors.

The ability to thoroughly analyse data and extract valuable insights and actionable ideas also ensures that the content marketing efforts move in the right direction.

By producing the type of content that generates the most amount of traffic and garner the most engagement is the key to maintaining a high ROI.

3. Keyword research and SEO

The long-term sustainability and success of a content marketing strategy largely depend on the number of traffic visitors it manages to get organically. Otherwise, it is hardly sustainable to drive traffic via manual promotion and paid advertisements.

To ensure sustainable success and higher rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), a content marketer needs to be well-versed in on-page SEO optimisation techniques, off-page SEO, keyword research, and other best SEO practices.

Some basic SEO skills that a content marketer would need are:

• Researching profitable primary and secondary keywords.
• Identifying long-tail keywords with relatively low competition and high search volume.
• Best on-page SEO practices, e.g., creating engaging, keyword-rich meta title tags and meta descriptions.
• Generating back-links from reputable third-party websites.

4. Project management

A full-fledged content marketing strategy usually means simultaneously tackling dozens of content pieces on several platforms: email, blog, press releases, social websites, third-party websites, etc. In addition, content marketers also often have to deal with keyword research, SEO, backlink management, day-to-day analytics, and optimization.

Juggling all these different aspects can become overwhelming, which is why content marketers must be very capable at managing projects effectively and efficiently.

The most important aspect is often the editorial planning calendar. If there is a team of content writers in an organization, tasks will need to be delegated to different writers. Then each piece of content will also need to go through several phases: content production, content editing, graphic designing, legal department, content publishing, content promotion, etc.

All this requires careful management and an excellent skill-set for project handling.

5. Conducting interviews

Content marketers are often required to conduct interviews, gather customer testimonials, and compile detailed case studies. Sometimes, they just need to conduct subject matter expert interviews.

Mastering this art of conducting interviews and gathering as much valuable information as possible is an important skill. The outcome of an interview depends significantly on the quality of questions. Here are a few tips that may help:

• Pre-interview preparation
• A basic understanding of the subject matter
• Formulating a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions.
• Preparing a detailed content outline before the interview
• Recording conversations
• Seeking consent and dealing with the necessary paperwork, NDAs, etc.

Conclusion

Content marketing can make or break your online business. But in order to do it right, the content marketers must be well-equipped with a wide variety of skills.

The above-mentioned five skills are extremely important for a content marketer to be able to perform effectively in a dynamic digital world.