4 must-have roles your Content Marketing team needs today

You might have seen one-man shows in Content marketing too. An individual starting solo, yet flying it higher than you can imagine.

However, imagination has a limit. That’s a popular notion.

Same goes for those solo flights. As the cravings to grow faster take over, responsibilities increase, and one human head falls short for the number of hats required to be worn for running Content Marketing.

So, this post is dedicated to the Content Marketing team, a business must have to fly sky high.

Let’s get down to the business of Content Marketing!

Essential hats in Content Marketing:

Many influencers and individuals have different opinions about the team members needed to get your Content Marketing right, but the tasks and requirements are unanimously agreed upon.

Here’s an overly simplified, generic version of essentials to keep your content marketing muscles in good shape.

 

• A killer content strategy. You need to find out what topics they need & want, when and for what platforms?
• A mix of your industry knowledge coupled with the use of pleasant language, strong power of persuasion, and other writing skills and tricks.
• The delivery of value in the right form at the right time, the way it creates the needed impact.
• The satisfaction of the audience, ranking on search engines, and measures to optimize the impact of content on both.

If you want to grow your business through content marketing, yet think you can do it all alone just the perfect way, hold your horses. 

You have just become the biggest threat to your business growth.

Because it certainly takes a lot more than just one head!

Wondering what roles do different agencies’ Content Marketing teams have in place? We have crafted a small piece to help you find that out too. Coming up SOON!

The heads you might need for Content Marketing

So, if not one, how many heads does it take to get there?

Content marketing is a team effort. This team needs to be as big as you want your business to be. However, if you don’t want fancy costs and big teams, you may stick with these essential roles in your Content marketing team:

1.       Strategists

 

Take Content Strategist as someone who lays the bed for the rest of the team to grow the flowers on. Their role is basic, vital, apparently simple but the most intricate and technical one.

The strategists begin with analyzing the company’s goals and forming the persona of the audience/buyers to target for reaching the goals (working in close coordination with sales and marketing departments). Based on the audience research, they’ll figure out the best channels to reach the audience, the content type that resonates with the audience, optimal content frequency, and other attributes, taking in account the SEO factors.

They’ll come up with an editorial calendar-the execution plan that the team follows to reach the company’s goals. A proactive content strategist is likely to keep tweaking the strategy based on their observations and analyst’s feedback.

The strategists are essentially the managers of the whole process.

2.     Creative

• Writers and other content creators

Writers-lot is responsible for communicating the company’s ideas and value to the target audience to get them interested in the company’s services/products. They are mainly responsible for the execution of strategist’s plans that begin with attracting and engaging prospects, leading to delighting and ultimately converting them to customers.

Their responsibilities could include creating the copy for blog posts, landing pages, social media posts, videos, podcasts, and other online and offline forms of content.

The success of funnel depends pretty much on the writing skills and knowledge of the writer. You can take them as the chief executioners of strategy and a strong driving force behind the sales process.

Writers with additional knowledge of SEO to help craft Meta-headings and descriptions, Alt-Texts and other SEO ranking factors are an absolute bounty if you are on a shoestring budget. However, if their schedule doesn’t permit additional workload, you might count on other production assistants (as an SEO or a web developer who knows SEO too).

Does the ranking depend on the length of an article? [A review]

Similarly, you might need other content creators (e.g., videographer) liaising with strategists and writers to create contents like videos, podcasts, webinars & more.

• Production assistant

Now that your compelling copy is ready, you need the content in the ready-to-go-out form, or it has a better place resting on your desktop.

For example, blog posts require the visual assistance of designers and editors. A blog post without visually attractive infographics or the magic of graphic designers might not get the potential reach despite having a high value.

The excellent content of a raw video that the videographer shot would not get the expected appreciation without the impactful edits and additional effects by a video editor.

So, the copy without the Production assistants is not worth calling powerful content.

3.     Promoters & PR

Now that the content is ready, the strategist has a plan in place to post, cross-post, repurpose and promote the content all across the web. Here is where the role of promoters comes into play.

Having your fantastic content ready but not reaching the prospects is all for naught.

Adding promoters to your team can maximize your reach and output many folds.

The benefits your business might get with promoter’s efforts outweigh the cost of hiring this lot.

The PR position collaborates with internal departments/teams as well as continually reaches out to external sources to get your name out there. The reputation and brand awareness of a company is highly dependent on the efforts and PR skills of this role.

4.     Analysis and optimization experts

The audit and the analysts closely monitor all the functions being executed against the KPI to measure the output. Apart from taking into account all the efforts, they observe all the web analytics, conversions, input costs and their return, media coverage, and other measurable deliverables.

Analysts basically gauge the performance of the entire team and each type of content and communicate the results of each effort with the strategists to ensure optimized results.

You might be wondering why have an analyst when you already have a plan in place?

Having an analyst who knows his job multiplies your chances to ace your content marketing game manifolds. 

So, which is the most critical role in the Content Marketing Team?

Each of these roles brings massive value to the table, however in coordination with other roles, not alone.

It is the coordinated teamwork that has the potential to hit a home run.

Wrap-up

• It is better to have a dedicated all-rounder Content marketer than not having any content marketing efforts at all.
• Nights of brain-storming & heart-wrenching revisions (to draft a good plan), a killer team (of strategists, writers, production assistants, promoters, and analysts) and days of ceaseless execution efforts later, well well, you deserve such good results. Uh-un! Not crazy!
• With a robust creative team, high prospects of growth, and a ship that can comfortably accommodate more sailors, DO NOT THINK TWICE BEFORE EXPANDING YOUR TEAM.

REMEMBER that there are no regrets in content marketing, only learning AKA A/B testing.

If you are just starting, the responsibilities of a Content Marketing team might overwhelm you. But guess what, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

However, taking calculated steps is the right level of sanity. Check out the strength of your chance in our comparison of an In-house Content Marketing team vs. Content Marketing agency.  

Winning Content Marketing with Psychology – Persuasion Principles

You’re Up, Next

If you are learning the ropes of Content Marketing for setting your team, what roles do you think you’d want to keep in your team initially?

If you already have a content marketing team running, what roles do you have in place? Where do the roles overlap?

Share with us in the comments 🙂