Content Marketing Team: A Comprehensive Guide

    A full-size content marketing department may not be financially feasible for your small business. But with a solid structure and understanding of roles, you can still develop a dynamic content marketing team to grow your business. Even better, you’ll put your business in a position to easily incorporate future members of your team.

    By Nick Rojas

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    There are several roles to fill when building a content marketing team, and different traits and qualifications to look for in each position. Read on for descriptions of the basic roles and the preferred qualifications for each member of your content marketing team.

    Content Manager

    Content manager is the visionary for effective new content. He or she is the final editor for content that has come through the creator and the designer, and may send content back through the cycle for edits. Content manager may track analytics to “take the pulse” of how successful the content is and send previously published material back to the creator to be optimised, based on analytics.

    Hiring: Look for someone excited about the company and eager to dive in. You want your vision to be their vision. It’s also ideal to have someone with experience as some sort of editor, and an eye for design.

    Managing: Make your expectations known to this team member. Let them know the exact parameters for each article, blog post, or photo, so they can relay this to the creator and designer. Tell them how much content you want to publish per week. Since this person giving assignments and overseeing execution, all published content is ultimately his or her responsibility.

    Creator

    The creator works closely with the content manager to ensure they understand exactly what he or she wants to see. This team member will then write effective copy, maintaining a consistent tone with previous material.

    Hiring: This person must have professional writing experience or some sort of degree in a field like English or journalism, and ideally some experience in marketing. You may want to present them with a paid “trial run” to ensure they can meet your expectations.

    Managing: Though the content manager is ultimately responsible for the content, make sure the content manager and content creator are satisfied with their working relationship. A disconnect could lead to delayed or poor quality content.

    Designer

    The designer has an eye for attractive, appropriate design. He or she formats copy received from the creator and may add pictures or video as well. When it is approved by the content manager for final editing, the designer publishes the material.

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    Hiring: You need a person experienced in the mechanics of web design, so make sure he or she has good references and examples of his or her work.

    Managing: The designer and the content manager need to have a solid working relationship. The manager gives feedback and ideas; the designer understands and responds.

    There are a variety of opinions about titles of content marketing team roles, but most of them seem to project the same cycle: Develop a vision, create and design the material, edit, and publish. Not all businesses have the luxury of hiring one person to fulfil each role, so you may end up being both the content manager and the publisher, while another employee is the content creator and the designer. But even a two-person team can be successful if they are skilled in the areas outlined above.

    Bottom line: Use whatever resources you have to work with. Above all, use a system through which content can flow. Once the content is published, keep an eye on its performance through your analytics program, and if it needs to be optimised, take steps to optimise it.

    If you follow these steps, your content marketing team will constantly produce new content and optimise old content. Your website will never stop improving, and you’ll see it in your website statistics and your increased revenue.