The role of a digital content developer is growing as society shifts to the online world for information sharing, commerce and socializing. Gone are the days when print was the dominant method of getting our news, communicating with loved ones, shopping via the mail and the like. We are seeing a quick transformation to a digitally focused environment and people are needed to generate text, graphics, videos, images, links and more to serve this growing field.
Creating Written Content
Digital content developers write or gather written content that will drive readers to their websites and online venues. Written content can be news related to the website’s focus; useful information, tips and advice; evergreen pieces; text that supports an advertising or marketing campaign and much more. Developers write their own text, edit the work of others, or gather text from other sources and repackage it. Also called online editors, they not only know how to write and edit text, they know how to post that text and make it work on a website.
Creating and Posting Images
Photos are a popular way to draw readers into a website and to communicate a message to users who don’t want to wade through a lot of text. Equally popular are interactive graphics that allow users to click on elements for further information, to take a quiz or to take part in some other activity. Content developers include those with expertise in photography or photo editing, graphic art and design.
Gathering Web Links
One of the biggest trends in digital content developing is curating content already on the Web. In old-school print media, a newspaper or magazine editor would go through hundreds or thousands of stories and select specific articles to package with images in their printed product. Today, the Web allows anyone to sift through these stories or information pieces themselves and to explore unlimited sources, both reputable and not. The digital content developer helps make sense of all those stories and sometimes conflicting pieces of information by gathering various viewpoints and supporting materials and posting synopses and links to the original sources.
Creating Videos
In the era of YouTube, everyone is a videographer. However, a professional digital content developer can help a company, nonprofit or other organization develop strong videos to share information, convey a message or signal a call to action.
Generating Social Media Content
General websites are being supplemented by social media campaigns. Therefore, digital content developers today are experts in how to design and carry out a campaign using popular platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and more. A successful campaign will feed itself, with users taking up the cause, adding their views and driving content among themselves. The developer then responds to this feedback by tweaking or adding to the campaign. Many companies today hire people specifically to work on social media with titles such as social media specialist or marketing manager.
The role of a digital content developer is growing across industries and within companies (see: What Positions in Marketing are on the Rise?). Job prospects continue to develop, as these professionals keep up-to-date on emerging technologies that take communication into quickly evolving areas. Content developers not only have traditional skills as wordsmiths, photo editors, graphic artists and researchers, but new abilities that empower them as leaders in the digital world.
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