10 Content Writing Skills You Need on Your Resume

If you aspire to become a freelance content writer, there are several content writing skills you should aim to add to your resume. In this post, we’ll look at a selection of content writing skills and explain why each one is essential for a successful career.

What Is Content Writing?

Before we get into our list, let’s recap exactly what content writing means.

Content writing is the creation of online written material. A content writer might produce content for social media, websites (for example, landing pages), blog posts and articles, press releases, ebooks, and more. The main function of content writing is to engage, inform, and educate the reader – thereby building brand awareness, trust, credibility, and lasting customer relationships. If a customer has a question, a good piece of content will help them answer it. If they have a problem (also known as a pain point), the content should show them how to resolve it.

Although the two are often confused, content writing does differ from copywriting. Copywriting tends to be more salesy and focuses on persuading users to take a specific action that benefits the business (such as making a purchase or signing up to a mailing list).

10 Essential Content Writing Skills

Engaging with existing and potential customers online is a major part of modern business life. The skills a content writer needs are great to have on your resume for a wide variety of roles, particularly as a freelancer.

Here’s our list of great content writing skills.

1. High-level Written Communication

In addition to knowing the rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling, you also need to understand sentence structure, syntax, and rhythm. Content writing isn’t just about coming up with great ideas, it’s also about knowing how to communicate them effectively. To impress your clients and build trust with the reader, your writing needs to be accurate and engaging.

2. Ability to Adapt to Brand Voice

Brand voice is the term we use to describe the elements of a business’s communications – the tone of voice, style, word choice, and vocabulary – that come together to create its personality.

There are a wide variety of brand voices out there, and a great skill for your resume is being able to adapt your content writing according to the brand you’re writing for. Just spend a moment thinking of the brands you follow on social media, and you’ll see how their voices and the way they engage differ. Some will have a formal tone, some will be humorous, some will cover serious matters, and others will engage by telling a story. These all need different content, and adaptability is key.

3. Knowledge of Your Audience

Knowing how to tailor your message to a specific audience is a vital content writing skill. If you don’t know your target audience, your content is unlikely to hit the mark. Before writing a piece of content, you need to establish:

• The demographics of your audience (e.g., their age, gender, location, income)
• Their values and interests (What matters to them?)
• Their pain points (What challenges do they face? What concerns do they have?)
• Their needs and desires (What are they searching for?)

Once you’ve established these things, you can develop content that really resonates with them. You can also adapt your style and tone to suit their preferences. Good research skills are very important here!

4. Research Skills

If your aim is to inform and educate your reader, you need to understand the subject of your writing. Well-researched, credible content will be more valuable to your reader and make it more likely that they’ll continue to engage with the brand (whether that’s by sharing your content, buying a product, or something else). Plus, by producing well-researched content, you’ll boost your reputation as a writer.

Quality content is also highly-valued by search engines such as Google. Content that follows Google’s E-E-A-T framework (i.e., demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) will appear higher on search results. This means more visitors to your client’s website and more conversions. More on search engine optimization later!

5. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)

More and more businesses are using AI to generate written content. As a writer, being able to use AI as part of your content creation process and recognize its strengths and weaknesses is another good skill for your resume.

For example, if you use AI as part of your research process, you will always need to double-check its sources. You need to make sure that the information provided is accurate and that you aren’t plagiarizing someone else’s work. Plus, you should only use AI content as a basis for your writing. Humanize it. You’re aiming your content at humans!

If you’d like to learn more about working with generative AI tools, check out our AI Prompting For Writers And Editors course.

6. Originality and Creativity

The most engaging writing is, particularly in a world of increasing use of AI, original and from a creative mind. By the end of 2023, the global digital content creation market was worth some $25 billion, and that’s expected to double by 2028. It represents an almost unimaginable number of content creators, so to make your content stand out, it needs to sparkle with new ideas and new ways of getting a message to hit its mark.

7. A Variety of Writing Styles

Unless you only want to work in a very niche market, being able to write in a variety of styles is an important skill. Content ranges from humorous to formal academic and business reports and all points in between. So, if you can tailor your content to any audience, you immediately widen your opportunities.

Take a look at the websites of two banks: Chase in the USA and Metro Bank in the UK. You might expect their homepages to be quite similar – a bank is a bank is a bank, right? But Chase’s content is very formal, and the design and writing style recognize that. Metro Bank’s homepage, however, is in a more approachable, chatty style. Does your resume make it clear that you could write for either bank?

8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Knowing how search engines work is a huge part of successfully producing and disseminating content. Pleasing the Google gods can be tricky at best, but learning the principles of SEO and incorporating them in your writing will greatly help your chances of web and blog content reaching your desired audience.

Some of the techniques you should know are:

• How to incorporate internal and external links into your content
• How to use keywords and phrases
• How to optimize content for mobile devices
• How to optimize meta tags (e.g., meta description and meta titles)

9. Organization and Time Management

Two of the ultimate transferable skills – organization and managing your time – are crucial for a career in content writing and should be on your resume. You probably have these skills without even realizing that you use them every day. If they’re not obvious in your working life, consider how you juggle a job, a home, the kids, life admin, and fit in a visit to your parents/the spa/the gym/the dentist … see, you’re already doing it!

10. Proofreading and Editing

Every content writer needs to produce clear, well-written copy that’s free from grammatical errors and the silly typos we all make from time to time. Learning to proofread and edit your work are essential skills if you want your writing to appear professional. Knowadays offers courses to teach you how to proofread and edit, so do take a look at how we can help you polish these vital skills for content writing.

Becoming a Freelance Writer

Now that you know the essential skills for content writing, polish up your resume. If you think a career as a freelance writer is for you, take a look at our course Becoming A Freelance Writer. You can even try it out for free!