For most people, the choice between a content marketer and a content writer can be quite difficult because they both do similar things.
But if you want to be successful in digital marketing, you need to make that decision quickly, as there are limited opportunities for both roles.
In this article, we’ll look at the similarities and differences between these two types of professionals in order to help you decide which one is right for your business.
Who exactly is a Content Writer?
A content writer is a professional tasked with creating informative, engaging written content to help brands showcase their products and/or services. They’re individuals that have skills that enable them to write simple, consistent, and relevant articles, social media posts, press releases, emails, and so on, so that they are able to deliver a dazzling experience to the brand’s target audience.
A content writer is tasked with the following responsibilities:
1. Research
Great research is directly proportional to great content. No matter what you are writing or who you are writing for, as a content writer, doing your due diligence with research has a boatload of benefits for your content. This is because more than half the time, you will be dealing with topics you may not know much about.
2. Editing written content
A content writer is often tasked with editing written content to make sure it reflects the brand’s expertise and voice, and is about as engaging as a customer’s favorite show.
3. Keyword research
Before a content writer can say he has written good content, he/she would have done the right kind of keyword research and used those keywords properly in their content. So yes, a content writer is usually tasked with making sure he/she is using the right keywords properly and adequately to increase the overall brand awareness and accessibility.
These are just a few of the responsibilities content writers are tasked with all in a bid to produce the best kind of engaging written content.
Who exactly is a Content Marketer?
A working definition of a Content Marketer is that he/she is a professional responsible for the strategic creation, planning, and distribution of valuable content to not only attract prospective customers but also turn them into loyal, paying customers.
A content marketer understands the importance of positioning content in strategic places that will reach the customers exactly where they are waiting for them.
Read also: https://hera.marketing/what-does-a-content-marketer-do/
Here are some of the responsibilities a content marketer is tasked with:
1. Research
Content Marketers need to do a great deal of research before they create any content they want to share with their target audience. Again, great research is directly proportional to great content.
2. Writing/creating content
Just like a content writer, a content marketer also deals with writing content. They will frequently branch out to create other types of content, such as video and audio content, memes, and so on for the brands they represent.
3. Keyword research and SEO
Again, just like the content writer, the content marketer is also tasked with the responsibility of doing adequate keyword research and adequate research on the brand’s SEO needs. This is all in a bid to produce accessible and high-ranking content for the target audience.
4. Creating a content strategy
After doing adequate research and writing/creating content, a content marketer also needs to bother him/herself with the creation of a strategy to get this content out to the target audience.
This strategy would contain information like where you would post the content you have created, what days of the week you would post, what metrics you would be tracking your progress with, and many other important factors.
5. Social media marketing
A content marketer should understand how to use social media as a marketing tool, noting important details such as where you need to be active and promote content in order to meet your target audience, where they are waiting for the brand, the type of content that excels on which social media platform, and so on.
6. Promotion and distribution
A content marketer is in charge of implementing almost everything on the content strategy plan in terms of promoting created content and distributing that content on the right channels for customer consumption, so to speak.
7. Analytics and reporting
It is the content marketer’s job to track the progress of what he/she is doing in terms of content distribution and brand positioning. They could make use of tools like Google Analytics to effectively track both organic, paid and even referral traffic on website blogs, and other platforms where content exists. After tracking and analyzing results of actions the content marketer has carried out, he/she now has to report those findings.
How is a Content Writer similar to a Content Marketer?
To answer this question, a content marketer and a content writer are similar in many ways, especially in their process of creating content. I mean, that’s why the confusion exists in the first place.
Here are some characteristics of these jobs that make people believe that a Content writer and a Content Marketer are one and the same:
- Both a content writer and a content marketer do a great deal of research before they write any content.
- Both may deal with editing written content.
- Both a content writer and a content marketer write content to showcase a brand’s products and/or services to a target audience.
- Both a content writer and a content marketer aim to write content in a voice that completely represents the brand.
- Both a content marketer and a content writer write content in the bid to help the brand properly achieve their marketing objectives while simultaneously enlightening the target audience.
These are the reasons why confusion might exist concerning whether or not the content writer and the content marketer are the same and do not have responsibilities that are unique to their respective jobs.
To clear that confusion up a bit, here are some of the characteristics of both jobs that explains why they are not in fact one and the same, and that hiring both a content writer and a content marketer may not be completely redundant.
The Content Writer vs. The Content Marketer
Objective-wise
A content writer’s main objective when writing content would be to produce content that is error-free, plagiarism-free and representative of the brand’s voice.
However, a content marketer’s main objective is to create content that is unique, educative, and engaging enough for the audience to actually take the call to action at the end.
Types of content
A content writer creates written content in the form of infomercials, articles, direct mail, sales and landing pages, and so on.
A content marketer however, creates content in the form of articles, blog posts, videos, social media posts, email marketing, newsletters, and so many other forms of content. As you may already be able to tell, their jobs are a lot more demanding than a content writer’s, which is why people employ agencies for this kind of work.
Work process
A content writer concerns him/herself with only producing superb written content for their articles, infomercials, direct mails, and so on. For a content marketer on the other hand, it is in their job description to go a step further by concerning themselves with the strategic placement of said superb content and everything else they could do to attract prospective customers and, over time, turn them into loyal, paying customers.
As a result, their work takes more time and effort in comparison to a content writer’s work.
Progress metrics
To measure how well they are doing, content writers track the number of words/articles they’ve written, carry out a plagiarism check, track how many times they used the keywords they are writing for, etc.
A content marketer, however, tracks the number of likes/comments/shares/email subscribers, your search engine results page ranking, brand impressions, etc. that they have on content they have distributed to their target audience on a number of social media platforms.
Wrapping up
Earlier, I mentioned how a content marketer’s work could be more demanding than a content writer’s, which is the reason a lot of people hire content marketing agencies over individuals.
A “two heads are better than one” type of analogy—I’m sure you get the drift.
This is where we come in. At Hera, we make content marketing look less stressful and more like an art. In doubt? Hit us up today!
We have worked with over 24 startups to drive conversions through increased community presence and relevant blog posts that we help distribute. To understand our process, book a 15 - 30 minutes meeting with us.
