Reclassifying Writing in a digital age
I sound old saying this, but the writing game has changed significantly. Existing as a voice for the community used to pay the bills, but today’s writing game is much more market-driven. Attempting to transition from a general assignment reporter to a freelance literary entrepreneur will take some training in both the familiar and unfamiliar.
Call this research-on-the-go. I have a writing talent but am just now taking steps to find out how to best strengthen it to better educate my audience. Though I am a journalist by trade, online I am identified as a content writer. My first step, naturally, is to understand the role of my digital avatar. According to one source, it favors my prior reporter skillset.
Author John Halas defines a content writer as “a freelancer hired to write online content for businesses.” They provide articles for companies on varying topics, and these are used to attract more traffic to the company's websites. The writer will go through a considerable amount of time researching the topic and writing an original article that contains no plagiarism. I am excited by the prospect of working for and learning a variety of writing styles from different clients. Am I willing to give away the rights to my work in some cases I produce for a paycheck? Yes, though I would ideally like a balance of credited and non-credited work. Worst-case scenario, my site will always feature original content. With this role defined, my next step in online literary education is understanding SEO or search engine optimization. It goes hand-in-hand with gaining online attention.
While I’ve championed catching ideas as part of my writing campaign, SEO content takes it further by singling out individual words. Specifically, ‘relevant’ wordsimproveg your website’s visibility in search engines according to this article. It goes on to say SEO content optimized to a search query impacts how high it ranks, thus increasing traffic. I’ve begun dipping my toes in these waters lately through increased hashtags frequency in my social media posts. Finding relevant hashtags to improve exposure, like most things, appears to be just a search engine query away. But this newfound attention won’t last long if I don’t understand the tools needed to refine and maintain the upward trajectory of my writing talent.
My past self would go to great lengths to avoid self-promotion. Creative Jason aims to remedy this. This Muse article, for example, keeps the frustrations of self-employment simple: “There are clients out there, though they may not all want to hire you.” Of the steps listed in the link above, I think getting comfortable with long-form writing while maintaining a quick turnaround is the area posing the greatest challenge. However, I’ve also seen myself perform well under pressure enough times to know I can adapt. As a scale of measurement, this blog post took about three hours to research and curate. I know my speed will improve every time I put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard upon accepting a challenge.
The new writing game poses a fair share of luxuries and challenges for those brave enough to embrace it for economic livelihood. However, Creative Jason is a malleable brand capable of learning, growing, facing, and ultimately overcoming any obstacle to meet any business need.
