Wanted now: Communication Skills

Kowledge workers who combine technical expertise with professional communications or writing skills are in demand.

Employers need writers to produce words for company web sites. The jobs fall into two distinct categories: working for online information providers and working for the web operations of more traditional firms.

Both are hungry for fresh talent.

It is not enough just knowing how to create good-looking web pages. To get this work you'll be expected to write compelling content that keeps customers coming back.

These jobs are not necessarily suitable for journalists and others moving over from old media.

Keeping copy flowing through a site and making sure all the clicks work is more important than worrying whether a site is well-written or not. If you're a hard-bitten news hound you might be expected to swallow your instinct for high levels of accuracy and checking.

And then there's search engine optimization — writing copy that ensures your company features at the top of Google searches.

As The New York Times points out this can mean waving goodbye to elegant, well-crafted prose and witty eye-catching headlines.

These two aspects of online writing probably explain why poor grammar and readability standards feature on many web sites. Inside the online business it i an open secret ex-newspaper journalists are good at delivering readable material that scores well with search engines.

If you're interested, you'll find online communications jobs advertised under I for Internet or M for marketing and not J for journalism.

It’s a great opportunity for out-of-work journalists—and there are a lot of them these days—as the supply of jobs is greater than the supply of talent.

Many journalists think they can’t do this kind of work because online production tools are difficult to use and it involves scary things like databases and programming. In fact, most content production is not at the hard-core code-cutting level. That's usually all done by more geeky, backroom types. And today's content management systems are no harder than editorial systems. I'd argue they are simpler.

Junior content producers and editors earn salaries in line with people of the same age working in other industries. In other words, you won't get much of a pay rise if you sign up. However, while the basic salaries are not exciting — the opportunities are fantastic. Some employers offer options, equity or profit share schemes — which puts an entirely different perspective on the offered salaries.

Many online editorial-oriented jobs are in companies with only a few employees. They offer a chance to get in on the ground floor. There’s always a good chance that options will be worthless, equity minimal and any profit share doesn't amount to much. In a small organisation you'll have plenty of scope to make sure there are profits.

Even if the promises of on-top-of-base-salary income never materialise, you’ll get to learn how a small company at the sharp end operates. And you’ll see the mistakes. You can take that experience to another start-up or use it to form your own business.

Disclosure: I should come clean here and admit I do a lot of web writing and editing in my communications business. If you're in business and looking for an experienced publishing professional to handle an online editorial project contact me.

Read: This Boring Headline Is Written for Google