Content Writing: Here’s Why An Internship Is A Must
The 21st century has many gifts for us. Improved connectivity, aim for sustainable development and rise of new opportunities in creative fields such as arts and writing. As businesses and start-ups spring up across the world, there is a growing need for content writers. Be it businesses or any creative venture, everybody needs to reach out to their audience and for that they need to properly communicate their ideas so that people can connect with them. This is what content writers do. They write pieces that connect with people.
Writing is an art - where one can express ideas in a free flowing manner. It is also like any other skill that one can get better at by practice. Much of the responsibility lies in understanding and honing the craft. There’s always a better way to describe things. Internships are such training grounds where you can practise your craft of writing.
An internship in content writing will give you an opportunity to practise, experiment and communicate with the readers. You become aware of your style, shortcomings and strengths. This understanding could be used to start a writing career suitable to your expectations.
Careers360 spoke to two content writing interns who give you an inside view of how the world of content writing really is.
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Parul Singh, Kolkata
During the second semester of Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, I pursued an internship with a writing firm. I enjoyed writing compelling short stories and this helped me decide to pursue a career in writing. Currently, I am studying MA in English Literature at St Mary College.
It was a two month duration internship and I worked from home. I received a stipend of Rs 5,000 per month. My role required me to develop content and design social media marketing campaigns for the company’s website.
Five hours a day doesn’t sound much but when you get into the practical aspect of realising the idea and creating compelling content, time just flies. I struggled a lot to meet deadlines. Content writing isn’t just about being able to describe a thought and write an article, it also involves coordinating with the backend of the company.
Brainstorming sessions are long and necessary to sit and discuss the idea with the group before I start working on my projects. It is difficult to move ahead without knowing what is expected of your writing. I learned some interesting technical aspects of content writing. My position familiarised me with SEO writing, blogging and nuances of content marketing.
Content writing involves heavy research and I have to admit that, at times, it gets boring to read long articles before beginning the work.
In my attempt to summarise my learnings I would say that writing content for the website is not a very easy task. It requires a lot of patience, practice and perseverance. You need to learn how to tap into the creative potential that you already have and harness its power.
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Mallika Bhattacharya, Kolkata
I studied journalism in college. I am passionate about writing. An important part of writing great pieces involves reading. Read a lot. I figured pretty early that it is of utmost importance to have a word bank in your head. From here you’ll borrow the right words for the right times. I am happy to say, I am able to give enough time to reading.
I am 25, and currently working as a writer. I did my internship with a writing firm during the lockdown due to COVID-19. I wanted to become aware of my versatility when it came to writing and I had a lot of time in hand to make use of. I enjoyed doing assignments, research work and putting words together to describe my thoughts.
When you start writing for a job role, you are forced to look at things from different points of view. Adaptability to different ideas and narratives plays an important role in shaping your style of writing. You realise that apart from building a vocabulary, it is fun and rather necessary to say things in a manner that would engage the audience.
The internship helped me work on my weaknesses. I realised that I needed to work a lot, read more, and write more in order to improve myself. I was happy to know that there’s more to work on to become better at this craft. Also, beware of Social Media platforms. Social Media can be distracting especially for writers. There’s so much going on that you might feel like you’re not producing something worthwhile leading to anxiety.
Writing takes time. It takes time to generate ideas, consolidate them and produce something engaging from scratch. I would suggest, reading more and practising more in silence is the only way to sharpen the skill. Internships helped me to get a good grip of the language. I could convey complicated ideas using simple words.
It is fascinating to come across the experiences of Parul and Mallika. They tried their best to give an insight into their experience of content writing internships. There’s no shortcut when it comes to writing. Reading is as important as practising writing. Practising is as important as finding your style in the process and once you’ve found it, be bold enough to experiment with it. Delivering compelling and well-written copies while juggling the constraints such as time and word limit seems hard in the beginning but gets easier as you write more. To see people enjoying or connecting with your piece of writing is one of the best feelings for any content writer.
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