Hi! I really need help figuring this out. I’ve been writing for 3 years, it’s been 1.2 years in B2B SaaS. I recently thought I’d go full-time and applied to a couple of startups in my city. For context, they’re usually well-off, seed funded startups that pay and treat you well. I get a call, get 2-3 rounds of interviews and everyone’s happy but then I don’t get the job. They want someone with more experience, especially in marketing. Usually they want someone who can write articles, guides, e-books, handle social media, formulate a strategy and has results to show for it. How do I become that person? I have article clients and they are happy, but freelancers don’t get to see the marketing side of things too much. I can’t stop working and intern in India, not financially viable for me. I could intern for a company abroad, for a subsidised rate. I’m so confused. My question is how do I get more marketing experience, and get people to see me as a content marketer—not just a content writer? In case my samples are the enemy here, here they are: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZH3tg_neBniqUNFS1yo0RM_uHM1Z50si

One thing that really helped me make the transition from freelancer to in-house, and then from content writing to content management/seo was showing my own projects and how they've performed. For example, I built a niche website that made $30,000 in one year. Now, that's not enough to quit my job over but it was impressive to people who wanted to know that I understood how to tie content to real revenue. I also had a YouTube channel I grew to 2500 subscribers. Again, not very big in the grand scheme of things but it was enough to show that I could (A) manage editors (B) build a content strategy and (C) execute in multiple media formats. My advice would be to start a blog or YouTube channel as a hobby project and become your own case study, then share some of these stats in your interviews.

This is really good, thank you for taking the time to write this. Can I message you with 1-2 questions?

@sticky-ocean-1451 Of course!

@lemon-airport-97306 May I know how you found the niche for blogging? I'm thinking of starting a blog but confused about the niche.

@rhythmic-apartment-74263 I actually wrote up my process here: https://ghost.org/resources/find-your-niche-creator-economy/

Thanks @lemon-airport-97306

@lemon-airport-97306 this is super helpful, thank you!

If the roles you're going after are Content Marketer or Content Marketing Manager roles, unfortunately it is pretty expected to have the marketing experience. You may want to look for in-house roles at small companies as a Content Writer or Copywriter, where writing is the focus. When you're an in-house writer at a small company, you have so much say! At larger companies, at least in my experience, there's already a lot of structure and writers just follow the briefs and outlines. At smaller companies, if they don't already have a Content Marketing Manager, there's a lot of leeway and room for suggestions. Less hierarchy and more collaborative. That's where you can get experience building a strategy behind the writing and then move up to general content roles. 🙂

This makes a lot of sense, I’ve noticed this too. I have a few calls next week with brands who don’t have much of content out yet, maybe I could pitch to them.

One way to stand out is to come to an interview with recommendations for how they can improve their content strategy/marketing. NOT their content, but their strategy. I’d do a tear down of their strategy, how it’s performing (based on publicly accessible data, like in semrush and others), and what you’d recommend they change to have more effective content marketing