There Is No Such Thing As A Content Marketer

There are two things to know about successful content marketing: it doesn’t happen overnight, and you can’t expect a team of one to deliver impressive results. All too often, the separate duties of design, writing, promotion and social don’t get the recognition they deserve. Content marketing is not a job description – it’s a team strategy that requires involvement from even beyond the marketing department.

Content marketing, as defined by the Content Marketing Institute, is a marketing technique where valuable content is created and distributed to a specific audience. The ultimate goal here is conversion – which is whatever your company defines as a valuable customer action.

By its definition, this technique requires several team members in order to succeed. Who do you need on your content marketing team? Who do you need support from? Let’s dive in.

Staffing your content marketing team

The best way to start building a content marketing team is to appoint a coordinator. This could be a project manager or the VP of Marketing, but there needs to be someone who can pull projects and people together within realistic timelines. After that, it’s time to build a team:

• Writers and editors are necessary. In a perfect world, they’d be subject matter experts, but this can’t always be the case. If not, skilled writers will be able to handle every task with proper direction, preparation and research.


• Designers make the magic happen. They take what the writers and the research/creative team (which can be your whole content marketing team) have envisioned and bring it to life. Always remember that iterations are essential, so be patient here.


• Promotion pros can be either social media or PR professionals – bonus points if they have crossover skills. Either way, it’s important to have a little bit of both of these talents on your team; they can be similar at times, but there are substantial differences between the two that shouldn’t be ignored. Don’t let your investment fall down into the depths of your blog – tell the world about it.

It’s all about the support

There’s nothing like being a social media specialist and having to beg the Web team to loosen security restrictions so you can access Facebook – your team needs to have access to support when they need it. Not a week later, not a month later, but on-demand, attentive support. Who does your content marketing team need on its side?

• The Web team should be able to do some heavy lifting when it comes to hosting on-site content. The content team, though, needs to consider the capabilities of this team and develop content within those guidelines. Play nice.


• Managers are your company champions: get them on board so that you can gain support from all of the branches of the company. This opens up access to product specialists, salespeople and customer service so that you can more easily identify what’s hot and what spaces need further education (they can be a content goldmine).


• Executives need to understand what your strategy is and – more importantly – must trust you and your team to deliver results.

The bottom line is that there is no one particular “content marketer” that can come in and save the day. This strategy requires a solid direction and many minds coming together to make it worth your customer’s time – good writing with poor design, poor writing with good design, good everything without a proper promotion plan will reduce the profitability of your content marketing.

Remember too that the intent of content marketing boils down to being generous to build your brand – without that basic understanding, the best team in the world may not be able to achieve great results.

They say it takes a village to raise a child – I say it takes a department (and then some) to develop a successful content marketing campaign. Who’s on your content marketing team?

Image credit: Creative Sustainability

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