Don’t let the wonderful world of Instagram fool you. Beauty writers work hard for the perks and fun that they get! But, even with the competitiveness of beauty writing, you can still get ahead if you’re willing to put your efforts in the right place.
Here are 10 steps you can take to become an even better beauty writer:
1. Sharpen Your Skills
As a writer, the best thing you can do is to continuously learn how to improve your writing and every other related skill you need to succeed in your career. Examples of what skills may be useful for a beauty writer include:
- Stylistic writing
- Editing
- Social media
- Professionalism
- Researching
- Networking
- Vlogging
And so much more! There’s no lack of skills you can learn and improve to help your beauty writing career. These are just the skills themselves, not even mentioning all the background information you can study to get better at writing about the subject matter itself (biology, chemistry, and other make-up related knowledge).
2. Attend Beauty Events
Part of writing the best work is knowing your subject matter inside out. By attending beauty events, you’re learning more about your field of choice and growing your understanding of the industry. Plus, there are many different people at beauty events that could be useful to know. Networking at these events can result in more work for you in the future.
Lastly, by attending the events yourself, you can get firsthand information. As much as it’s good to know how to research and write content based on what you’ve read, it’s also useful to learn how to write from primary sources. This gives you the opportunity to be linked as a source or to provide a unique perspective on something you experienced personally.
3. Self-Publish
Find spare time to write and publish your own work. Whether you have bylines regularly or not, self-publishing allows you to put content on your own terms. You can experiment with your writing style or topics while building up a body of work for yourself and growing your personal brand.
The more presence you have on your own, the more opportunities you may get in the future to publish on the platforms of your choice. It’s never a bad thing to have more control over what and where you publish. Self-publishing is a great option to practice, build your own style, and grow your personal audience over time.
4. Study Other Writers
The common advice for writers is to read as much as possible. While this is useful advice, I’m not sure it goes far enough. It’s not enough to just read what other authors have published, you need to study it and to understand what makes their writing enjoyable, well-liked, and interesting.
Studying the writing of other top beauty writers helps you to pick out trends in their writing, learn to mimic their style, and figure out what gives them their unique voice and charm. Take the time to carefully examine their writing and learn whatever you can to improve your own writing and transform your style to fit your unique voice as a writer.
Choose writers you aspire to be like and study their work consistently. Find senior writers in your industry or outside who you can look up to and learn from to advance your career.
5. Public Speaking
Although writers don’t usually spend a lot of time speaking, you can open certain doors for yourself by getting better at speaking in front of people or cameras. A writer who can also express themselves in their speech are able to get more exposure and further opportunities to share.
The more you know how to get your words out, the more chance you’ll have to grow your platform and get hired for further work.
Speaking gigs can be more lucrative than writing jobs. With the growth of video content across the world, short-form video is a great way to draw some attention to yourself. Having a good presence in front of a crowd or camera and speaking your message clearly can help you get better at writing and advance your career at the same time.
6. Legal Nuance
Controversial writing is often a good way to get more attention, but you need to understand where to draw the line. You don’t need to be a lawyer, but it’s a good idea to learn when nuance is necessary and how to write in a way that won’t get you into legal troubles.
When you’re writing about touchy subjects, you need to have discretion and the good sense about how to write tastefully and to express your opinion without stepping on too many toes. There’s a way to write your opinion, even about highly controversial issues, without going over the line or censuring yourself.
7. Be Inclusive
As a beauty writer, it’s your job to talk about your subject matter in the context of everyone who might be using it. While you’re free to give your opinions and talk about how it works for you, you’re more likely to stand out if you write from a more inclusive standpoint. Talk about how products will work for people of all different backgrounds and ethnicities, write tutorials that are useful for people of all different abilities, and examine products at all different price points.
When you create inclusive content, you’re broadening your audience and expanding your readership. Content that is relevant to more people helps you build up a loyal readership and gives you a wider appeal. If you can pitch and create content that’s highly inclusive, your work will stand out.
8. Social Media Marketing
Social media is the simplest way to get your message to the largest number of people. Without readership, the quality of your content means nothing. You could be an incredible writer, but you’ll find it difficult to get paid more or find new projects unless you can prove you’re able to build an audience for yourself.
You’re a much more valuable writer if you can also market and promote your content on diverse social media platforms. Once you start working with social media, it’s easy to learn and understand algorithms and effective posting techniques for every different social media platform.
Social media marketing skills are a bridge between the creation of content and the use of it. If you can learn about both sides of content, you’ll be a much more valuable asset to any company or content marketing team you wish to work for in the future.
9. Internships & Networking
You might have noticed a trend so far… Networking has come up already a few times in this list, under the mention of other tips. Networking and experience are your biggest assets as a writer. Knowing the right people will help you get jobs more easily. When people already know and trust you, you’re less of a risk to them.
There are so many beauty writers today. Standing out is one thing, but sometimes your network is what provides you with the most benefit. Knowing people helps to open doors. That’s one of the purposes of interning, as well. Having that firsthand experience in different positions and meeting editors, writers, content managers, and other contacts on the job will help you to excel at what you do.
10. Do Your Research
If you don’t have high-quality content, to begin with, it’s harder to sell yourself as a legitimate writer for long-term projects and reputable publications. Even beauty writers need to put in the hours to thoroughly research the topics and present an unbiased piece of content that gives voice to all sides of the story.
It’s perfectly fine to write opinion pieces and mass appeal articles like hair quizzes or holiday makeup styles, but everything you write should have integrity and proper sourcing.
Being a beauty writer is no walk in the park! If you want to excel in your career, there’s a lot you can do to get ahead. It takes time and effort, but the results will be worth it if you invest in the right areas of your professional development.
