The three main categories of content writing are content writing for earned media, content writing for paid media, and content writing for owned media. You’ll want to have content writing samples for each of the categories that you write for.
Earned Media
Earned media includes publications and digital media platforms such as magazines and news outlets. Journalists and writers focus on these channels, which may also include script writing for video production or podcasts. Earned media implies that writers are paid by the platform that is doing the publishing and not by the subject of the articles.
Content writing examples include:
- News articles
- Reviews
- Essays
- Podcast scripts
- Video scripts for news and lifestyle outlets
Paid Media
Paid media is any kind of advertising that a company or organization has to pay for. Content writing examples for these channels include:
- Copy for websites
- Copywriting for advertisements
- Content writing for brochures
- Script writing for commercials
- Social media advertisement copy
Owned Media
Owned media is any platform or channel that is owned by a company or organization where they have total control over what appears. This includes email lists, website blogs, and social media channels.
Content writing examples for owned media include:
- White papers
- Social media posts
- Email copy
- Video scripts
- Blog articles
- Newsletters
- Product descriptions
- Landing page copy
- Success stories and case studies
Internal Communications
One last type of content writing that often gets overlooked is content writing for use within a company or organization. This type of content writing is sometimes done in-house, but many content writers make a good living from specializing in internal communications alone.
Content writing examples for internal communications include:
- Employee handbooks
- Training guides
- Scripts for educational videos
- Communication templates
- Stakeholder updates
Content writing and SEO
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization and refers to the process by which content, code, and websites are designed to be easily found by search engines. For example, if you search for something on Google, the articles and websites that pop up on the first page of your search results are the ones you are most likely to look at. Therefore, it’s important for websites that want to drive traffic to their site to design them to be attractive to Google so they rank higher up on search results.
SEO content writing is specialized to take advantage of keywords, common search terms, and other elements that Google bases its search result preferences on. Blog posts, web copy, and product descriptions are SEO content writing examples. While this article doesn’t cover the ins and outs of SEO content writing, it is a great market, so if you do specialize in it, be sure to showcase that expertise with SEO content writing samples.
For more info, check out our complete SEO guide here.
What is great content writing?
Great content writing depends a lot on the type of content writing you’re doing and for whom. For example, an incredibly well-written op-ed for an online news outlet is going to read very differently than a compelling product description for a client’s online store. So how do you figure out the best way to write for all the types of content writing that exist out there?
As we discussed above, you should already have narrowed down the types of content writing you’d like to specialize in, depending on your areas of expertise and professional experience. A journalist and a digital marketer are both content writers but of a very different sort, and you’ll need to figure out what you’re aiming for to make sure you hit the mark with your content writing examples.