By Richard Taylor, Published October 14, 2014
I wrote about collaboration being an important part of content marketing and mentioned the importance of having a content team in place. Last week I focussed on involving team members from across the business.
This week I want to expand on that with a bit more detail around the structure of such a team and how it can benefit the content marketing process.
The most critical appointment is that of the Managing Editor – just like a newspaper editor – as they have overall editorial control of the content. They must therefore have a set of specific skills:
- First and foremost they need to be a creative writer/content producer
- They must also be senior enough to persuade other parts of the business to contribute content – engage the organisation.
- They need to be a planner so they can communicate the editorial calendar across the business. Make content a strategic priority.
- They need to be social too – in the media sense that is. As part of the audience development role they need to understand what’s being said across the social channels.
- They need to be reasonably technical too as they will need to understand the workflows associated with automation and the analytics attributed to campaigns.
- And of course they need to manage the content team.
The team composition will of course depend on the size and nature of the business but some of the skills that are essential to have include:
- Social listeners who will monitor what’s being said about the issues in your industry, the brand, product or service. We know that recommendations are now more important than brand messaging so it’s really important to stay as close as possible to your target audience.
- Content creators are people in the business who can contribute content from their area of expertise because they fully understand the issues that their customers face at that point of the sales cycle.
- Content facilitators that can take the content idea and turn them into meaningful content across different channels. They may also need to manage the generation of that content where external agencies are involved e.g. infographics, video, animations etc.
- Campaign manager who runs the marketing platform that promotes the content.
- Someone responsible for content approval who will ensure that what is being generated and distributed meets the quality threshold and complies with company policy or external regulation.
The managing editor and the content team should meet regularly to review the editorial calendar to ensure that target dates are being met and to monitor the response rates to campaigns and content. If the composition of the team is from across the business, then the influence of content marketing will be greater and success will also help to change the culture of the organisation.
If you can create such team whether insourced, outsourced or more likely a mix of the two, then you are well on your way to content marketing success.
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