The good news for writers is that there’s more work available than ever – and if you can position yourself correctly, you’ll quickly find your niche.

That doesn’t necessarily mean your subject matter expertise – it could equally mean your research style, your natural tone, or even the stage of the content process where you’re most at home. Are you a writer, an editor, a proofreader, or a conversion specialist?

The better you know this, the better you’ll be able to communicate your value to prospective clients. So we’ll talk through the key ‘types’ of writer we encounter, and what we look for in each.

In an ideal world, the client and the agency will always be able to provide a watertight brief to the writer, detailing each section and laying out the desired take-out, the overall structure and the key facts and figures to include.

However, in reality, things can be a little less straightforward – and as the writer is often going to be the person who explores the topic in the greatest detail (or knows it inside out to begin with), they will increasingly be asked to join the process at an earlier stage, and help shape the narrative.

This means writers need to take a more active role in the briefing stage; querying the brief, working with the agency or client to update it in line with their research, asking key questions, and using their natural curiosity to deliver the best reader experience possible. 

We’ll talk through the ideal process, when and how to ask the right questions, and why you should always treat a brief as a living, breathing document.

While not every freelance writer needs to be a fully fledged marketing or digital strategist, it’s important that they are able to solve a problem for their reader – and what that problem is will depend on where they are in the customer journey.

We will give a brief overview of a typical customer journey, and give examples of how this knowledge can mean the difference between an acceptable piece of content and something that really drives results.

As artificial intelligence and machine learning play an increasing role in content creation, today’s writers must explore ways in which they can stay ahead of this curve.

We’ll discuss the inherently human skills possessed by good communicators – and why it’s wise to avoid ‘commodity content’ where this change will happen within months as opposed to years.

You’ll learn how to leverage your abilities for the new technological era, and turn the change into an advantage.