Building the Modern Content Marketing Team
A blueprint for the roles, skills, and talent of modern content
Last week I wrote an article expressing a few of my thoughts about the future of content marketing. While the future might not unfold exactly as I described in that article, one thing is for certain: the roles and responsibilities of content marketing teams are changing.
Content marketing was one of the first disciplines to put a focus on building a value-based relationship with customers, so it’s only right that content market is involved in more and more of the customer lifecycle.
From the first demo video a customer sees to the order form they sign, content marketing should create or influence every touchpoint along the way. But the void between reality and actually executing on such a broad plan, lies in capabilities.
It all comes down to what your team is capable of.
Filling the Content Talent Void
When Content Marketing first arrived in the marketing world, the scope of the discipline was often limited to blog posts and other “thought leadership” pieces. The skills required to accomplish a content team’s daily goals rarely stretched beyond the capabilities of a talented copywriter.
But since that time, content has grown into so much more. Infographics, websites, videos, emails, documents, product releases. The list of daily responsibilities has grown exponentially for a content team in today’s business world. A single copy writer no longer covers the skills required to deliver on content expectations. Modern content teams need to fill this skills gap in one of two ways: expanding your team or expanding your capabilities.
Expanding Your Team
It seems counterintuitive, but one of the hardest positions I’ve ever been in professionally was when I was asked by the higher ups to expand my content team. While having headcount to add is a rare luxury, I found the prospect paralyzing. What skills does the team really need? What should I be looking for? What if I add the wrong role? When it comes to content or creative roles, I imagine I’m not alone.
But over the past few years I’ve been a part of several growing content teams and witnessed dozens more, enough to recognize a few common patterns in the roles that are hired and when. I’ve laid them out below in the suggested order of priority.
I’m a firm believer that a content team’s first hire should always be a copywriter. No matter how much the content game changes, the core responsibilities and deliverables will almost always involve some sort of writing. The copy on your website, in your blog posts, in your pitch decks, in your product releases… it all tells the story of who you are as a company. All the other content bells and whistles are built on the foundation of strong, compelling copy.
What to hire for: There are many different styles of writing that are required of a content team. From the engaging narrative writing of blog posts to the detailed objective writing of research reports. From product copy on the website to the mission statement in pitch decks. Flowing between these styles is a rare gift, and it’s what separates a great content writer from the rest of the pack. Make sure you look for a large breadth of work.
Once you have a copywriter skillfully spinning your company’s narrative in it’s many forms, you can move your focus to how that content looks to the outside world. More and more companies are discovering just how important design is to how they’re perceived, how customers interact with them, and their company’s ultimate success.
What to hire for: When you’re hiring a designer, you have the luxury of being able to see they’re work. You can tell pretty easily if they’re talented enough to deliver what you’re looking for. But beyond quality, it’s important to look at the breadth of what they’re capable of. Sure they can design a beautiful infographic, but can they lay out a readable ebook? The more your designer is capable of, the more your team is capable of.
Video has exploded over the past few years as a marketing and sales tool, and well beyond. And all the hype is well deserved. I can speak from personal experience that the engagement and response I’ve seen from video far exceeds any other content format. It’s easy to digest, easy to share, and easier to connect with. When you have the writing talent to shape the content and the design talent to shape the vision, you’re ready to add video.
What to hire for: Here again, you should be reviewing portfolios to make sure an applicant is talented enough for the role. But what their portfolio doesn’t show you is how efficient a candidate is. In my experience, many videographers are perfectionists that take weeks to deliver a single video. They’re gourmet chefs. But content marketing is a lot more like Chipotle: still high quality, but high-paced and high volume.
With all that content your team is churning out now, it’s time to add some accountability and insight into what you’re producing. Introducing the data-focused analyst of many names. Marketing operations specialist, content analyst, data scientist. Whatever they go by, this person’s job is to track the performance of your content, work with other teams to ensure your team is delivering value throughout the company, and suggest improvements and ways to optimize.
What to hire for: Anyone can pull a report out of Google Analytics and email it to the team. A truly great analytics guru goes a level deeper and uncovers the story the data is telling. They share insights and suggestions with the team, saving them the time and trouble of combing through the data themselves. When you’re interviewing a data focused role, move beyond technical competence and ask questions that get at how they contribute to the team. Ask about how they helped improve performance or a change they helped implement.
As content continues to evolve down the funnel, the need for more complex content is growing. Adding a developer to your team can open a whole new world of interactive content to your team. They can create personalized landing pages for key accounts at the top of the funnel and ROI calculators for the sales team to use at the bottom of the funnel. And those are just the most obvious content projects a developer can take on. There is a whole world of interactive ideas and content formats yet to be explored.
When hiring for this role: Unless you’ve worked with a developer in a content role before, the guidance you’ll be able to provide your new developer will be limited. You want somebody that you can pitch an idea to, or better yet, somebody that will pitch you and idea, and run with it. Developers who excel in this role are the ones that enjoy creating a lot of different solutions and who live to ship them.
I’ve found that content teams do far better than most with minimal management. I’m not sure if it’s the personality types involved or the sheer volume of opportunity to deliver value, but content teams generally know what they should be doing and do it well. But there is a rare breed of manager that can take a high functioning content team, streamline their processes, guide their efforts, and turn them into an industry leading content team. If you get the chance to hire one of these managers, do it!
When hiring for this role: This is different than your typical marketing manager role due to the creative nature of the work. A manager that excels in this role is what is sometimes called a “player coach,” or somebody that can execute and manage. You need somebody that understands the disciplines of all the roles they’re supporting in order for them to help the team grow and evolve.
Expanding Your Capabilities
Now not everyone has the luxury of the budget require to expand a content team so vastly. In fact, a majority of content teams are typified precisely by their lack of budget. But that’s no reason to despair. I’ve spent about half of my content career on such scrappy teams and the lack of resources certainly doesn’t impede your growth, it just forces you to evolve in a different way: by expanding your capabilities.
Whether it’s learning a new skill or making a new hire, it’s still growth. If you lack the budget to hire a full content team, you can still learn those skills yourself or supplement them with the right tools.
In lieu of a designer, you can now teach yourself enough design skill to get by quite easily and inexpensively. The Adobe Creative Suite is on an affordable monthly subscription model now and youtube is bursting with tutorials on Photoshop, Illustrator, and more. It may seem like an insurmountable task, but I guarantee you’ll be floored by what you’ll know after just a week of learning.
For those with only basic design needs, tools like Canva are making design ever more accessible.
Video is also far more accessible than you might think. For under $500, you can setup a studio that will rival anything else in the industry. That includes lights, backdrop, and even the camera. There are numerous resources to get you started and improve your skills, but my favorite by far is the resource center by Wistia.
And development, the most feared and least understood discipline of them all (funny how those always seem to go hand in hand), is again, far easier than you might think. I was able to teach myself enough HTML, CSS, and JQuery in a weekend to produce Pardot’s first ROI calculator. And I did it all for free with the wonderfully hands-on Code Academy.
If you don’t require too much custom code, there are a number of tools that can help you setup landing pages, resource centers, a content streams, most notably Uberflip.
So, there you have it: a very longwinded take on what the content marketing department of today and tomorrow needs to look like in order to seize the massive opportunity before them. I know that I for one am excited to see the capabilities and talents of content marketing teams grow and expand. It means that the customer journey is going to be shaped and architected by the marketers that truly have the customer’s best interests at heart in everything they do.
About the author: Matt Wesson is the Director of Content & Creative at SalesLoft. Follow him on Twitter or see more articles on his LinkedIn page.
