As the number of creative freelancers continues to increase, the competition for work is greater than ever before.
It’s critical for freelancers to upskill their offering or face being left behind in the race.
They also need to ensure that they have the very latest latest industry knowledge to offer the services that today’s businesses want.
So how to know what’s essential to the industry?
PeoplePerHour did a review of its data from 2019 to predict freelancer requirements for the coming year.
It highlighted the following top 10 skills for those within the creative industries to have:
- Video creation
An extremely valuable skill, and one that sees video marketers receive on average 66% more leads per year than other content forms, is the ability to create and edit videos.
Covering digital animations or real life video formats, more brands and businesses are continuing to utilise this marketing tool.
- Content editing
It takes time for businesses to create and distil its perfect message – something that many brands simply do not have.
Those who possess content editing skills will continue to win work simply by being able to tweak website copy, social media content, editing scripts, creating infographics and brand guidelines etc.
- Animation
This is an area that has risen dramatically in popularity over recent years as brands realise the potential of this tool.
Allowing organisations to create entire worlds and fancy advertising without even leaving the desk, removing expense of real-life locations and actors. From 3D modelling, to games, character creation and architecture, there are various animation services in high demand.
- Logo design
An obvious one – every business requires a logo!
The initial design is often a jumping off point for further logo-related work such as social media assets, gifs and animations.
- Article writing
From a sell-in company feature to a SEO motivated piece, article writing is a highly desirable skill as brands continue to look for ways to update its content offering and appear more authoritative.
- Illustration
Providing brands with a softer, more playful approach, illustrations are key in today’s age where consumers demand transparency and the human touch.
- Graphic design
A key skill for this year as the demand for websites, product design and marketing collateral continues to increase dramatically.
- Brochure, leaflet and flyer creation
Coming in the top 15 of requests from buyers last year, the ability to create such documents is still prominent within the industry – despite today’s internet age.
- HTML expertise
A whopping 380 new websites are created every minute (wow!) so the continued demand for experts within this arena is certainly not slowing down.
- Data entry
A key factor in allowing businesses to understand their audience and help them create better products and services – but ultimately a very time intensive task. The ability to perform admin input to assist businesses to organise and utilise this information is essential and highly sought after.