Are you looking to improvise on your Content Marketing? You need to have a clear budget in mind. Once you have the budget determined, you now need to make an important decision; You either can hire a Content Marketing Agency or build a content marketing or management team structure that can do the same for you.
So, what should you do?
While both the approaches have their pros and cons, we will choose to discuss the latter in this blog post. It is a well-known fact that good Content Marketing leads to greater brand recognition, and internal teams understand your brand better than any external agency.
We made it a simple analogy with the last statement. But in truth, there are a lot of challenges in having your own digital content team structure, doing marketing for your brand.
When content marketing becomes your primary or even your secondary channel to bring in qualified leads and clients, you have to be careful about how you build or structure your content team. The content team structure forms the basis of a success or a failure.
A badly framed content team may lead to its failure even if you have rockstars in the team. I am here to help you build a prolific content team based on my experience as a content strategist for the last 10+ years.
For the sake of brevity, I will write this post in the form of a FAQ, as I get a lot of questions around content and teams every week, and that makes me think that a QA format will be ideal for this post.
How many People do You need in Your Content Marketing Team?
In my estimation, the size of your team depends on your goals. But the goals have to be realistic. A person may want to have a million visitors per month, yet he might only be interested in spending $5000 a month. It is not at all possible.
So, you have to have the right budget and the right goal. In order to achieve 10,000,000 visitors a month, you would need 10 people working on your project. And, if the average cost of each is $5000 / month, you are going to spend around $50,000-$60,000 a month on your team.
Now, when I say I would need 10 people, I mean to have the following:
- Content Writers x 5
- Content Editor
- Content Manager (Content Specialist with a Junior Developer’s Skill Set)
- SEO Specialist
- Link Building Specialist
- Content Promoter
If the quality of your writers is good, then the Editor will be fine, but if they write below par content, then you would need to kick in another Editor, and sometimes even two. So, you can’t start with interns and think that you are going to crack the code.
There is a common trait that I know is observed. Writing is always outsourced to freelancers or content agencies. And I would recommend that. But if you wish to keep everything in-house, I am going to tell you what your individual team members should look like.
While it is often thought that we should rope in generalists, I do not go by that opinion. Specialists are better in junior roles and senior roles need people who are more generalists. That’s why I wish to answer your queries as to how to hire specific people on your team.
What kind of a Content Writer Should You Hire?
Hiring the perfect content writer is by far the most important thing that you need to consider while building your team. You writers can make or break the game. And, a lot of writers are not flexible. Because, even for professional writers, writing can be boring when done as a mundane job.
People get tired of doing the same thing again and again. And why won’t that be the case? Repetition is difficult to bear for the human mind. You need writers who are ready to take the challenge and be flexible in terms of the content to write. You are particularly looking at writing web pages, blogs, guest posts, press releases, ebooks, whitepapers, and case studies.
Your writers should be great at the language they are to write in and must be willing to learn. Even if they do not know SEO or Marketing per se, you can always train them on it. But you know, storytelling and being a genuine writer are skills mostly found inherent in some people. Creativity can’t be taught. It is in the DNA of your writer.
What are the Skills that are needed in a Content Editor?
Apart from language, and very high precision in noticing small errors, I would say you need nothing more. But if your editor is a craftsy fellow who can weave magic with his words, you are well placed.
A good content editor can turn a bland writeup into an exciting story. Yes, they have some magic to give life to plain sentences.
The editor should be one who can also follow checklists and processes, for example, he should be able to make sure that all the write-ups given to the Content Manager to publish are of high quality and in accordance with the company’s brand guidelines.
Although the designation or the title may wrongly make it seem that the Content Manager is the Manager or the Team Leader of your content team, it is actually the Content Editor who sits at the top of the helm.
You would need to train your Content Editor on Project Management Skills, as well as some Client Servicing Skills. This is because he has to continuously talk to people from other departments and convey what the team is up to, and understand the requirements of different teams such as Sales and HR.
What are the traits to look for in a Content Manager?
The content Manager does a very critical role in the team, but sometimes he might not be the most skilled person on the team. That’s my personal opinion. You might and could disagree.
The content creation team and Content Manager make sure that the Content is Created and Published on time. So, he may be responsible for making the Content Calendars and making sure that the Editor and the Writers follow the timelines.
Not just that, he might take the responsibility to overlook if the content was promoted properly. So, he would always be after content promoters who might often be email marketers, social media specialists, or community managers.
And while publishing content, he might need to do some basic HTML, CSS or Javascript edits too. So, having a certification or experience in front-end development is an added plus. And if your SEO guy is more of an analyst than a technician, he has to know front-end development as a must.
In ideal situations, if all is going well, the Content Manager will have the most time on his hands, so he can assist the Content Editor in Project Management.
How to hire the Perfect SEO Strategist?
Your SEO guy doesn’t only need to be an SEO Specialist but a Content Marketing or SEO Strategist as well. What do I mean?
An SEO professional might be involved in doing a lot of things. Some of them specialize in Technical SEO, some in Link Building, some in International SEO and some are people who can strategize.
Now, I do not mean to say that you have to hire someone who is a consultant – a big shot guy. No. I mean, that the SEO specialist on your team must know how to drive sales through Content Marketing.
You may ask, why?
Traffic, visitors, and impressions are all vanity metrics. What actually makes things move are the conversions. Audiences turning into customers.
This is why your SEO guy needs to be a person with experience in creating SEO content funnels. Unless that occurs, things are not going to move in your favor. For a Content Marketing team, the SEO in charge has to have a vision in mind.
Apart from all this, your SEO Specialist should also be very good with data analytics. He has to keep analyzing his campaigns and advise the team accordingly. Which makes analytics an important skill for him.
How to Hire a Link Building Specialist?
SEO link building is an important part of your team. Your website ranks essentially due to the links pointing towards it. Creating at least 15 links every month is important for a business that is serious about Content Marketing.
A link builder not just will create links to your website, but also find exciting opportunities for you to guest post on. Guest posts help you reach a new audience who might never have come in contact with you earlier.
Experience with generating links via HARO is an asset.
A point to note, smaller agencies and consultants have only a handful of employees that take care of this entire process. But the fact remains that they are not focussed on bringing growth for you. Such agencies are only employed by brands that see Content Marketing as a checkbox to tick.
But if you are serious about content marketing, a 10 member team is a minimum. Else you can find an agency that delivers those results.
Skills to Look For When You Hire a Content Promoter?
You need to find a rockstar who is good at the following skills:
- Social Media
- Community Management
A content promoter must have these three skills but when we drill down the entire skillset to a functional one, he must be a good copywriter, a good designer, and a good IT guy. In the sense that he must be able to roll out Email Marketing Automations.
While extroverts are fit for this job, sometimes introverts do a much better job at promoting content. That is thanks to their focus.
Tips when Building Your Content Team Structure:
- Your top guy has to be your first hire. If the Content Editor is the person responsible for all your Content Marketing, let him be your first hire. If he is not, then then one who would be on the top of the pyramid should be.
This will help them build a team according to their plan. Having full autonomy is always better than not having that.
- Build the team in stages and do not be quick with your hiring decisions. Make sure the errors are not repeated. If a person hired has a skill missing, you can always train him, but if all of them have skills missing, it will be a challenge.
This means that if you give time and consideration to each hire, and learn from any mistakes that may occur, the overall situation will be a lot better.
- Do not micromanage. Make sure that all the members of your team are self starters and not people who are overly dependent on others. Overly dependent juniors kill the time of their seniors.
This doesn’t mean that juniors need to be perfect, and do seamless work. It only means that they should be willing to take the initiative, like learning without support. Trying without support, and trying to do their best.
- Keep the communication with the team open. Grapevines are a part of every company. And more often than not, they are problematic. You should try to keep trouble at bay by not endorsing grapevines.
Try to be as transparent as possible. This will increase the trust within the team and help you win in the long run.
- Focus on creating systems. People may come and go, but your systems and processes will stay.
- Make sure some of the members in the content team are agile and can wear multiple hats. This will help you reduce bottlenecks.
- Have regular team meetings and discuss your digital content strategy often. Great ideas can come from anywhere. Just try to brainstorm and gather all the pearls. It will also help to make your team feel better about their content team roles.
- Make sure that each member of the team is accountable for his work. Juniors can easily shrug off work and put it on their seniors, and seniors can do likewise. So, make sure that each person is answerable for the work or role he is responsible for.
- Invest in training. Your team may be terrific. But they always can learn more and be more awesome. So, make sure you arrange for training within and outside the team.
- Make sure that the whole team is working towards the same goal together. All of them working to achieve the same KPIs is very important for your Content Marketing to realize its true potential. Work on establishing that.
Make a Great Content Team that Makes the Needle Move
Content Marketing is not free. It comes with costs. But with the right approach and the right content team structure, you are going to gain more out of less.
Take into consideration all that we apple about, and hopefully you will be the next Content Marketing champion by creating a successful content management team structure.
In case all this feels overwhelming, Missive Digital is always there to help.
