When I launched Copyblogger in January of 2006, the goal was to teach other writers what I had learned over the previous seven years as an entrepreneurial writer. I had built three successful businesses by that point using what later became known as content marketing.

At the base of what I taught was the intersection of audience-focused content and direct response copywriting techniques. Now, in 2021, this style of writing and marketing is so much the norm that it may seem strange to think that there was a time when it wasn’t.

Along with those two writing topics, though, was also another range of “cornerstone” topics that made up Copyblogger’s editorial focus. Related disciplines such as email marketing, search engine optimization, social media, landing pages, and conversion optimization had to be a part of a successful writer’s toolbox

Nine years later in 2015, my friend Jason Miller coined the term “hybrid marketer” to represent this bundle of skills. Jason had become head of content marketing at LinkedIn, and wrote a report called The Hybrid Marketer that explained his reasoning:

Yesterday’s marketers could get away with being creative powerhouses, but today’s successful marketers aren’t just good at one thing -- we are hybrid marketers. We are truly Renaissance marketers for the new age.

You can see the reference to the pure “poets” of yesteryear. Back then in the offline world, you might not have achieved the upper realm of success as a purely creative writer, but you could still have a solid career.

Digital marketing is different in that it’s inherently multidisciplinary. While content and the people who create it are at the core of what succeeds, there are very few people who succeed by just writing.

Plus, it’s an unfortunate fact that strategic business people tend to undervalue what it takes to create great content. They’re dead wrong, but it’s still smart to expand your skill set and position yourself differently in order to maximize your perceived value.

In other words, become a killer and a poet. Put another way, become a marketing generalist with a specialization in content creation, rather than just a “writer.”

Research supports the fact that being a generalist will make you a stronger writer and content creator. And the broad complexity of digital marketing is actually a blessing to your career.

In the bestselling book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, author David Epstein explains research that explores whether being a specialist or a generalist is better for developing mastery of a skill. Turns out, it depends.

In so-called “kind” environments, patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is extremely accurate and usually very rapid. So if you’re trying to master chess or golf, you practice that one thing exclusively.

But in “wicked” environments, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete. There may or may not be obvious repetitive patterns, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both. In this case, generalists thrive by drawing on a broad range of experience and knowledge.

Digital marketing is definitely a wicked environment. The context is constantly changing, and that change is accelerating. And if you work with clients, even your project environment changes constantly.

Now, this is not to say that you don’t have a core specialization, which is communicating with other human beings. And it doesn’t mean that you don’t choose a niche or specific industry so that you can develop true domain expertise.

It means that when dealing with a “wicked” arena such as digital marketing, you need a broad range of competence and knowledge to succeed. And this has been true for writers of all types for generations, in that the more you live and the more you read, the better you write.

But there’s more to it than that. While it may sound like a downside, it’s actually something that will protect your livelihood. Take, for instance, the prospect of being replaced by artificial intelligence.

As I mentioned, chess is a “kind” environment with predictable patterns. It’s been 23 years since Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue. In 2021, a free chess app on your phone could beat Kasparov ... no exaggeration.

“Anything we can do, and we know how to do it, machines will do it better,” Kasparov said at a recent lecture. “If we can codify it, and pass it to computers, they will do it better.”

In my next email, we'll tackle the issue of artificial intelligence when it comes to digital content creation. It's more of a thing than you may think.

Keep going-

Brian Clark
Founder - Copyblogger