Avatar Posted by Cameron Francis on in News Uncategorized

As businesses seek to develop content marketing strategies and marketing agencies begin specialising in content marketing, they are challenged to find the right people to operate an effective content marketing group.

The talents and composition of this group will be vital to its success, more so than other types of marketing initiatives. We will examine the various roles and functions that constitute a content marketing team and the types of people you will need to ensure success.

The Primary Content Marketing Functions

To have a productive content marketing group, several elements should be in place. There are several different functions, including SEO, writing, and knowledge of the business that are integral components.

Knowing how to attract and recruit the proper candidates and identify these skills in a large pool of candidates will be vital to your success. We will begin by shedding light on the types of skills your personnel will need during the lifecycle of a content marketing campaign.

Business Strategy

The most vital component of content marketing is having the capacity to assimilate it with a business’ central marketing goals. This increases the probability of having a good ROI, and guarantees that energy stays focused on the main business objectives. You can achieve several differing marketing objectives with content marketing that may range from increasing brand visibility to generating leads. However, your team must have a good understanding of your market, goals, and positioning in order to do this well.

Face-to-face Client Interaction

Your content team will get an excellent benefit from a staff member who spends a good deal of time with client interaction. You may feel as if you know your clients well and that you have developed an excellent customer profile. However, someone that actually interacts with a customer will have a better understanding of their actual needs. The capacity to judge whether a content piece will be suitable for them will be far better if there is someone on the content team that interacts with them regularly. It’s beneficial to have this type of staff member in an advisory role to the content team.

SEO & Social Media Marketing

You will need someone with the knowledge of how to make your content visible to potential clients. SEO and social media knowledge will be helpful with generating content that will help with organic SEO and that will gain traction on social media platforms. This person’s expertise should include various types of channels including SEO, video, and social media. The specific expertise that is needed will be determined by the scope and scale of your marketing campaigns.

Writing Content

Actually generating the content is a primary component of your content marketing campaign, and it is vital for SEO. If you have a focus on generating web copy, articles, or blog posts you will need an excellent writer on your content team. A suitable writer needs to have a good understanding of your business and have the ability to consistently generate compelling and engaging content. This position is a necessity and this will usually be the person that puts in the most time during the campaign.

If your plan is to hire a marketing agency, this helps you gain an understanding of the types of people that are needed to run a successful campaign. If you run an agency (or an internal corporate marketing group) the descriptions that follow will give you some ideas regarding the traits that are needed for these functions.

Strategists

There are two types of strategists that will work on content marketing campaigns, business strategists and content strategists.

Business Strategists

The focus of a business strategist will be on having a good understanding of the industry, your business and having a big picture view of the competitive context of the effort.  This comprehensive knowledge will help to ensure that the content that is generated integrates well with other marketing initiatives, that you are appealing to your target audience, and that it is commensurate with your business goals. It is best if your business strategist has a marketing background to help you form a bridge between the needs of a business and the channels that should be used to reach your target audience.

Content Strategists 

A content strategist will develop an editorial content schedule based upon business data, and topical and keyword information. They will take broad content concepts and develop target keywords and titles from them. Basically, they create a bridge between content creation and SEO.

This may be a separate job or a step in the process for your editor or writer. However, a content strategist is a vital role.

The content strategist should have a broad knowledge of internet marketing along with understanding the process of writing and SEO. This broad knowledge will help them to be effective and creative in developing your content strategy.

Writers

A good writer will have a background in online content creation and journalism. These types of writers will normally have the speed and versatility that is needed to develop content.  An excellent writer will have the following traits:

  • Is diverse and flexible enough to target multiple topics and audiences.
  • Can generate a reasonable content volume in a given period of time
  • Can write in different formats from white papers to blog posts
  • Has the ability to research, find new topics and put a unique spin on various topics.

Look for a writer that has experience generating content for your particular industry. A person with broad experience can give your content a unique appeal.

It’s a good idea to test a new writer with several small projects, prior to forging a deeper relationship. A writer that has a good grasp of your brand, but may lack some other traits, such as speed, might have more long-term effectiveness than a prolific writer that needs a lot of management and editing.

SEO Professionals

People frequently struggle to comprehend the connection between content strategy and SEO.

There is a misconception that SEO is replaced by content strategy. As long as client searches are performed on search engines, SEO will continue to change and have relevance.

Content strategy has simply altered the focus of SEOs.  Rather than just focusing on your site, SEOs are now focused on influencing potential clients with content that may be appealing to specific target groups. Therefore, your content strategy SEO must have a broad understanding that encompasses more than traditional SEO tactics.

In addition to these skills you will be seeking an experienced person with a broad understanding of internet marketing and content strategy. This broad experience will help them to make your content visible to your target audience.

Customer Experts

One member of the content team should be someone who regularly interfaces with customers. This could be a sales rep or someone who works in customer service.

A sales rep will have an understanding of issues that arise when dealing with customers such as:

  • The point in the decision making process when contact is usually made with the company
  • Questions and concerns that frequently arise
  • The way the sales funnel works
  • Who are your toughest competitors
  • Which benefits resonate with various types of customers
  • What type of language is most effective in prompting customers to initiate action
  • What type of language will turn-off different types of customers 

It’s not difficult to see that the knowledge a sales rep brings to the table can be quite helpful for content marketers. Customer service staff may have some other insights that can be helpful.  They might have insights into the types of concerns that are raised in the course of a project.

By gaining access to people with this type of expertise, you will have the ability to generate content with the language and insights that will make a huge difference when your prospects view your content.

When you are engaged in content marketing, putting together a solid team makes an enormous difference. If you are thinking about retaining the services of an agency to handle your content marketing campaigns, you will be able to determine if it is worth the expense. For large content marketing initiatives, putting together the right team could be rather expensive.  This guide will help you to determine whether you should do this yourself or use the services of an agency. 

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