I love this question. It demonstrates your understanding that content marketing is an ever-evolving field that demands your skills evolve if you want to continuously improve and grow in this business.

Here are some tips I think are worth following to help improve your content marketing skills:

1. Learn More About the Strategies That Drive Content Marketing Success

A lot of people, especially those new to the field, assume that content marketing is just writing. Blog posts are, after all, the go-to content type. But content marketing is so much more than that. If you take a deep dive into the different strategies behind content marketing, you’ll learn about:

• How powerful video content is
• How important repurposing content can be for your overall efforts
• How to plan long-term content strategies to maximize your efforts
• The importance of measuring your content marketing results

The strategies behind your content marketing efforts form the basics and shape the framework of your content that will ultimately drive the results you need.

2. Understand the Importance of Analytics

Tracking and monitoring how well your efforts are doing is critical to your success. Remember, you can’t improve what you cannot measure. With content marketing, you have all the tools required to track the metrics you need to keep improving your efforts at your disposal.

Considering all the graphs and charts and tables you’re presented with across all the different platforms, there’s a bit of a learning curve to get through, but it’s well worth it. Being able to interpret the data and analyze how this information can improve your efforts moving forward is a critical skill that will help you improve your content marketing initiatives.

3. Don’t Undervalue Email

Email is not dead. It’s crucial to content marketing and in my opinion, is the one, solid connection you have with your audience that allows you to share important information about your product or service. Improving your communication skills via this platform is therefore a skill you should not neglect. If you can communicate in an engaging way using email, you can boost your followers, raise your conversions, and engage more readers. Don’t underestimate what email can do for your business.

4. Make an Effort to Improve Your Writing Skills

Writing is typically seen as an inherent talent. However, content marketers require both talent and strategy when it comes to writing skills. You need to know the basics of writing, from grammar rules to syntax to sentence structure—that goes without saying. Applying all these skills and combining them with key content development strategies is just as important.

5. Learn Basic Design

If you have a graphic designer or artist on your team, this may be something you don’t necessarily have to worry about. However, there are so many tools you can use today to design content for your business. This is especially important if you’re a marketer that’s just starting out. Learning to create simple designs means you can easily publish material that’s aesthetically attractive and eye-catching.

These practical skills are critical for marketers and I hope you take the time to consider them to improve your content marketing skills. If you have any questions, join the conversation on Twitter or LinkedIn and give me a shoutout. Or you can simply leave a comment below.