Why, When, and How You Should Hire a Full-Stack Digital Content Writer

Your company may need a full-stack digital content writer, and you didn’t even know. This is how to identify the right talent.

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

Content: One discipline. Many subspecialties

Log in to Glassdoor.
Enter “content writer” in the search bar.
The results reveal a cornucopia of titles, including:

1. Product writer
2. UX writer
3. Technical writer
4. Recruitment content writer
5. Content strategist
6. Editor
7. Content manager
8. Creative marketing writer
9. Blog writer
10. SEO content writer

There’s more.

The digital space contains many different content types: search engine optimization prescribes long-form content spiced up with just the right terms. Brand marketing needs thought leadership articles. Engaging, multi-step products require UX writers. Conversion optimization efforts require experimentation in copy and content. Social media promotion calls for witty posts and creative ads, and internal communication requires happy hour invites and annual review announcements.

The case for specialty writers

While overlaps do exist, each content sub-discipline requires specific, distinct know-how. Take, for example, conversion optimization writers and long-form interview journalists. Their work shares just two attributes:

• The use of words
• Featured online

Many of the job descriptions in the Glassdoor search mentioned here require that a candidate, sometimes with only two years of experience, would be a jack of all trades: someone who can deliver on product description copy, e-commerce optimization, SEO inspired content, production of translations, and copy editing!
Of course, (s)he’s also expected to be collaborative, creative, hardworking, data-driven, and CMS proficient. In other words — superhuman.

Digital content is a new discipline that fairly recently has begun to evolve into sub-specialties. The content domain has been largely perceived as a one-size-fits-all type of expertise — in stark contradiction with other web professions, long understood to be multiform and diverse. After all, a JavaScript developer is not expected to be just as fluent in Ruby on Rails. Similarly, you’ll choose a brand identity designer to develop your logo, but hire a product designer to create your website.

The lack of nuanced understanding of professional web writing results from the fact that writing is the most organically human ability of all professional web skills: You don’t need to be a professional to engage in text and language. You just have to be a (literate) person. Most of us have written something today — a text message, an email, a note on the fridge. Fewer wrote code today, and fewer still designed a logo.

As digital experiences become more complex and more professional, the understanding of digital content becomes more nuanced: many companies — definitely the larger behemoths of the web — hire and groom different types of writers, fit for their different types of needs.
When a company has the resources to hire specialty creators, it should. Seasoned content specialists can smell from miles away when a marketing writer was responsible for UX copy (exuberant call-to-action copy, such as “Click here and be forever happy” are a telltale sign).
More importantly, just like you can immediately pick up on distortion chords even if you’re not a musician, so can your customers intuit that the text is off the mark.

When to hire a full-stack digital writer

That said, sometimes it doesn’t make sense for a company to hire multiple content specialists: it may not have the resources for that kind of headcount. Alternatively, a company may focus most of its content efforts in just one domain, with only occasional needs for others— problems that a freelance specialist can easily solve.

More interestingly, the richer and more vast online experiences become, the more the lines between the disciplines get blurred.
For example, let’s say that you want to inspire users to sign up for a weekly newsletter via a promotion banner on your website. Do you need a marketing writer to lure in the audience with punchy messaging, or should you opt for a savvy product writer to do magic with a concise, conversational text that leaves no room for second thought?
Probably a little bit of both.

If you’re looking to hire a content writer, don’t assume that the person hired can do “all things content.” What you can do is deliberately look for a full-stack writer: an expert who can skillfully and thoughtfully produce various types of content.

What should you look for in a full stack writer?

1. At least one demonstrable specialty. A decent full-stack writer is an expert in one content discipline — or more. It’s best to avoid hiring a writer who’s done a million things and nothing at all.
   The reasons are two: first, you want to make sure that you have at least one area fully covered. Probably the one that requires the majority of your content focus. Second, expertise is a muscle. It takes time and hard work. While there’s nothing you can do about the progress of time, you can choose someone who’s done some hard work, at least in one area. There’s a good chance they can apply that same profundity in other realms.
2. Ability to ask effective questions. Full-stack writers know that they have to ask questions for context and direction to do their job well. They want to understand the task’s goals, the target audience, the quantitative and qualitative KPIs, alongside the technical specs, such as word count, structure, deadline. Ideally, they will get all of this information unprompted. If not, they will proactively get it.
3. Courage to learn what they don’t know. The multi-disciplinary writer whose claim to fame is creating stellar decks doesn’t assume that she can just as proficiently manage viral Facebook posts. Maybe she can and maybe not. But she can learn. She can read up, explore examples, ask around, consult with an expert, or take an online course.
4. Context switching. Context switching gets a bad rap for wreaking havoc on productivity and peace of mind. Still, the full-stack writer has to juggle different thought frameworks to deliver on vastly different types of projects. Every discipline has its own rules and requires different preparation and work methods.
5. Creative cross-pollination. While context switching is a must, full-stack writers don’t, of course, magically forget all they know about content strategy when they take to the task of copy editing, for example.
   Instead, they’re able to create original work informed by various projects, break the rules, and creatively spice up their work. Thus, a fantastic article headline may find its way to a call to action button. Who knows. Why not.
6. Data-sensitive, if not data-driven. Full-stack writers are intimately proficient with digital KPIs and like to track the metrics that apply to their work (volume of traffic, click-through rate, sign up ratios, search engine ranking — depending on the case). Most importantly — they know how to translate data insights into new content or copy.
7. A team-player who enjoys solo work. Some content creation requires teamwork. For example, product copy is largely a collaborative effort, crafted side by side with product managers and designers.
   Conversely, writing a thought piece is usually a solitary experience that requires quiet time and concentration for research, writing, and editing. Full-stack writers are comfortable with both styles of work.
8. Stellar writers. ‘nuff said.

Full-stack writers don’t commonly self identify as such — but they have a tremendous value to companies in the digital space. Companies on the lookout for digital writers would benefit from identifying the need, zeroing in on the required skills, and carefully selecting the right talent.