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Finding fulfilling professional work as a creative can be tough. Thankfully, with the myriad of companies who are either 100% digital, or increasing their presence online, there’s new opportunities opening up for creatives every year.
There’s lots of different options as well, giving you flexibility in the way you satisfy your creative urges through your career. As creatives, we often struggle to see the incredible value we can offer companies, and this may be because we’re not as concerned with ROI as we are with creating things that are meaningful.
But here’s the thing – businesses large and small, especially digital businesses, are in constant need of savvy creatives. Whether it’s coming up with punchy and engaging marketing concepts, redesigning the look and feel of an entire brand, or designing a detailed user-interface, creatives are needed to bring elegance, simplicity, and balance to the otherwise mundane and complex.
Opportunities For Creative Writers
For all the writers out there who thought that blogging was “so 2010,” think again. Having worked in a large, public company, I’ve seen first hand the necessity for great writers. Sure, bloggers often help achieve the marketing objective of driving inbound traffic from Google, but once the reader lands on the web page, a talented, creative writer is needed to communicate the sometimes inexplicable into simple, concise communication.
The company I manage content for is an insurance comparison website. People are coming to us looking for help and information on some of the most complex, mundane, but essential areas of life. It’s my responsibility, as a creative writer, to entertain and delight them with content that makes it easy for them to get their burning questions answered.
But there’s more out there than just article writing. There’s podcast and video scripts, and creating written content for social media. All of these jobs will look very different in ten years, especially as voice search becomes more popular, but there will always be a way to flex your linguistic muscles in a creative way.
Opportunities For Visual Creatives
Today there’s a wild amount of opportunity out there for visual creatives. From creatively and clearly visualising data and complex concepts, to designing entire user-interfaces for the latest world changing startup, the amount of variation available in terms of digital career opportunities is massive.
Take the Facebook interface for example. We take it for granted that it looks the way it does today, but a team of highly creative graphic designers thought up that original interface, and then shipped it off to developers for building. This interface has since been iterated upon thousands of times over, but think how many millions of people interacted with that first design. The design literally shaped the way millions of people around the world communicated with their friends and family.
Netflix is another great example. For each piece of content on Netflix, designers are constantly creating and testing new thumbnails, to split-test and determine which versions resonate which which users.
Opportunities For Multimedia Creatives
But what if you consider yourself a creative more in the multimedia, production sense? Well, there’s some amazing digital opportunities for you too! Every since the advent of the web, the idea of a traditional media institution has been challenged in every facet. From the way creative content is created and distributed, to the way it’s consumed and creates revenue.
Podcast production specialists are becoming “the new bloggers” for companies who are discovering the power of leveraging this platform with their audience. As a creative medium, the podcast is only just entering the digital marketing space as a content channel, so there’s a great advantage for creatives who want to move in on the frontline. From interviewing talent, writing scripts, researching, and the actual production and post production of audio content, even within this emerging space there’s room for you to find your creative niche.
The bigger the business, and the deeper its pockets, the more they’re investing in their own multimedia department. For example, companies like Sportsbet create their own original video content, much of which is comedy and entertainment based. They even have an in-house production team to create this content.
Also, sites like Buzzfeed which, in the early 2000’s, re-wrote the rules of what it means to be a traditional media company, have paved the way for smaller, niche digital media players. You have .com sites like Complex, a pop-culture news website which also own another website called Sole Collector, which is a content based website providing news and insights on all things sneakers, as well as another media site called First We Feast, which is known for its viral Youtube content, where celebrities are interviewed whilst eating a series of intensely hot chicken wings.
New Technology Will Bring New Creative Opportunities
As the web expands, and new and innovative websites, apps, and business models follow, the digital career opportunities available for creatives will expand as well. The landscape as it stands today will look very different five to ten years from now, and how that landscape looks and sounds will largely be shaped by creative people, not finance departments.
The important thing is to start somewhere on the broad road of your creative interests, and see where it takes you from there.
