Brand marketing success in 2014 is significantly tied to content marketing success, but is your content marketing team up to the challenge? If not, you’re missing opportunities to expand your brand’s reach, drive word-of-mouth marketing, increase sales, and build brand loyalty.
A powerful content marketing team is staffed by highly experienced and talented marketers who understand not just how to use digital content publishing and sharing tools but also fundamental marketing theory. While your content marketing team might start small, you should be prepared to add headcount and budget dollars quickly because results will be evident sooner than you think.
To help you get started in the development of your content marketing team, following are 10 key roles that can be found in a powerful team. At first, you might choose to combine some of these roles or to outsource certain tasks that would be performed by some of these roles, but use the following list as a road map to ramp up quickly and effectively.
1. Executive/Director
The leader of the content marketing team could be a chief content officer, vice president of content marketing, or content marketing director. The title is less important than the function, because this person is responsible for the content marketing strategy. This person also has P&L responsibility for the content marketing team as part of the larger marketing budget. This person goes to the executive-level meetings to ensure the content strategy aligns with the overall business objectives and integrates with all other marketing and business strategies.
2. Editorial Manager
The editorial manager leads the team of content producers. These are the people who write, design, and publish the content for the brand. The editorial manager is also responsible for the content calendar. As the content team expands, this role could split into multiple roles led by a managing editor who oversees a team of editors. Each editor is focused on a specific area of content.
3. Marketing Integration Manager
The marketing integration manager is responsible for ensuring the content marketing plan integrates with the overall marketing plan. This person works with other marketing departments to ensure all opportunities are seized and duplicated efforts are eliminated.
4. Writers/Content Creators
The content creators and writers are responsible for creating all of the content published for the brand. They will create short and long-form content in all forms (written, audio, video, and image). They report to the editorial manager.
5. Data Analyst
The data analyst is the metrics person on the content marketing team. This person measures performance, conducts research, and handles SEO and SEM. The data collected by the data analyst is provided to the marketing integration manager and editorial manager who work with their teams to ensure the data is utilized effectively. For example, the editorial manager works with the content creators and writers to ensure keywords and other SEO tactics are implemented within the brand’s content.
6. Marketing Integration Coordinator
The marketing integration coordinator reports to the marketing integration manager and works with other teams within the marketing department and across the business to ensure content marketing efforts are fully-integrated with other marketing initiatives on a daily basis.
7. Content Social Media Coordinator
The content social media coordinator works closely with the social media marketing team to ensure the brand’s content is seen by the right audiences and drives appropriate engagement. This person also monitors the content and performs social listening tasks to identify content opportunities.
8. Content Designer
The content designer is the graphic designer of the content team. This person performs any design tasks needed to create or enhance the content. For example, the content designer creates custom images, infographics, slide shows, and so on.
9. Content Trafficker
The content trafficker is the traffic cop who ensures all content is flowing through the department in order to adhere to the content calendar.
10. Content Advertising and Promotion Coordinator
The content advertising and promotion coordinator works closely with the digital advertising and marketing promotions teams to develop content assets in support of advertising and promotion initiatives.
Is your content marketing team ready for 2014?
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
