Putting together a content marketing team is a little like designing your dream garage band. If you leave out any of the key players, your team might still make music, but it will always seem like it is missing something. There is no exact formula for a content production team, but as you learn project management fundamentals, you will figure out who is essential and who is just background noise.
Every Band Needs a Manager
The content strategist is the heart of the team. This is the person that oversees the creative process, institutes timelines and develops the project goals. A strategist can be the editor or chief content officer, but should be someone with a strong enough presence to balance out all the other players.
Skills needed:
- Knowledge of information architecture
- Proven content management
- Effective relationship building
A Lead Singer
A content creator is the face of your team. You can go third party for a content creator. WriterAccess, for example, puts a talented pool of writers at your disposal to keep the music flowing. Your content creator, in-house or out, will work closely with the strategist to develop effective copy that engages your target audience.
Skills needed:
- Good written and verbal communication
- Able to work on a schedule with tight deadlines
- Effective and engaging copywriting
A Really Cool Drummer
No garage band could survive without someone keeping the beat. No content team is complete without someone monitoring the numbers, either. A data analyst keeps track of each campaign to see what works and what falls flat. Monitoring the metrics allows you to improve with each marketing project, too.
Skills needed:
- Knowledge of third-party analytics tools
- Ability to digest complex data and translate it into a format that everyone can understand
- Excellent comprehension of social networking
The Guitar Player
Graphic design is what connects everything together just like a good guitar player unites the drum beat with the vocals. You can also outsource graphics as long as you find someone who understands your needs and is able to provide a rich, visual element to your campaigns.
Skills Needed:
- Web and digital design experience
- Master of graphic software like Photoshop and Illustrator
- Full understanding of multimedia platforms like Ajax and Flash
Building a Better Sound
This is the core of your content marketing team, but you can add more talent to create a richer, fuller sound. For example:
- A social media manager makes sure you get the most of the mainstream social networking sites.
- A SEO strategist keeps your content optimized for the best search engine performance.
- A multimedia or video producer takes you beyond just blogs and ads to make use of interactive video and audio assets.
- A content curator bubbles up the trending topics and shelves the content that is tired.
It is possible to be a one-man show in marketing, but in most cases, you and your client both benefit when you work with a group of professionals that make beautiful music together.
Writer Bio: Darla F is a freelance writer available for projects at WriterAccess.
