11 Key Skills Needed Web Content II
With the majority of businesses completely dependent on the internet for broadcasting its brand or message, the content of your website, blogs and newsletters is vital.
At Enigin we try to keep aim to keep our content to a high standard, but it takes effort and skill to do so. For Enigin Distributors and others int he energy saving business it will require the same - but what skills, experience needs to be developed or hired?
Here are the final six of 11 skills needed:
6. A Community Leader
If your editor is developing your content from scratch, or rehabbing it from the studs out, chances are she’ll need to work a bit to develop the necessary contributor contacts, either inside your company or outside of it. This ability is especially critical if you can’t pay outside contributors, but hope to attract them to write for you for the exposure, glory, and honor of it.
“It’s one thing to develop the editorial at a site like Salon.com,” I wrote in 2000. “It’s quite another to schmooze contributors to write for a little-known site with only a trickle of traffic and no cash flow.” That’s still true today, even if the benefits are a little clearer these days.
7. Social DNA
Is your candidate a social butterfly online? Does she enjoy interacting via social channels? This point is also from Rick, who notes that the best content creators “promote their own content. They build and nurture relationships, and they know how to use these relationships to spread their own content, without abusing them.”
In other words, look for folks who are social butterflies online, even if they may not be in the real world.
8. An Open Mind
Many of the journalists I’ve worked with would sniff at the idea of taking a corporate job. They think doing so is demeaning or equates to selling out, compromising themselves, marginalizing their talents, ruining their reputations, smiting their families, bringing shame upon them, or permanently installing themselves on the dark side.
The key is to find people who understand and embrace the fundamental thesis of Content as Opportunity: Businesses now have both an imperative and the incentive to produce top-shelf content. (Also, a side note to journalists who might be wrestling with the notion of “selling out”: You’ll make more money on the dark side. Just sayin’.)
9. Knowledge of the Industry… or Not
This is a tricky one. Although industry knowledge can certainly help, it’s not going to make a content creator sink or swim. A bright person who’s a quick and motivated study can swim, buoyed by little more than a float or two, despite no immediate knowledge of a specific industry.
I’d rather have a crack writer with sound business skills who’s a noob in an industry (and can maybe lend a fresh perspective) over an insider who’s intimately familiar with the subject. Why? Because the latter sometimes speaks the language of the industry rather than that of the audience.
Remember a fundamental rule of journalism: “No one will complain because you made something too easy to understand.”
10. A Winning Personality
I’m only half joking. Remember that the person in charge of your content sets the tone for your site. It’s her editorial voice, very often, that will speak the loudest to your readers. Hire someone with little discernable personality, and chances are their writing voice will be just as flat.
11. Editorial Skills
Oh yes, and then there’s the small matter of editorial skill. Can this person write? Look for the ability to write circles around your competitors, attention to detail, and sound editorial judgment. It’s a tall order to find someone who excels on all editorial counts, so also look for a willingness to admit where the weaknesses may be, and plan to hire accordingly. For example, copyediting is not my own strong suit, which is why I don’t copyedit.
By the way, it’s not by chance that editorial skill appears as the last item on the list. Someone who is both a good writer and a good editor is a find, true, but the other 10 points here are equally important.
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