6 Steps to Scale Your Content Marketing Strategy
Some marketers have adopted a content-based strategy. It is important to provide value and engage audiences.
You have likely already discovered that it takes a village to successfully implement a content marketing strategy.
Continue reading if your goal is to build a content marketing team that can help you scale your content and your business.
In this blog, you will learn why it is important to build your team of content marketers. You’ll also discover the advantages and disadvantages of using an agency or hiring a team. Finally, you’ll find out how you can start your team completely from scratch and scale your marketing and sales efforts.
What is the purpose of a team for content marketing?
Creating a content marketing team has numerous benefits.
A content marketing team can still reach out to your customers even when your banner advertising is not performing.
A team of content creators and distributors can help your brand achieve greater success by delivering a more engaging experience.
A content marketing campaign can deliver three times more leads and be up to 60% cheaper than a traditional marketing campaign.
78% would prefer to learn more about a business by reading articles of value, rather than traditional advertising.
Hiring a team of your own vs. hiring a third-party
I’ll discuss the pros and cons of each before making my recommendation.
Content Marketing Agency
Pros
- Hiring a group of employees may cost less than hiring individual workers
- The majority of content marketing tasks have already been handled by agencies. This saves time in recruiting, onboarding, and training.
Learn more about Cons
- You may experience problems meeting deadlines if they aren’t your employees. The agency will have many clients, projects, and other customers in addition to you.
- Not all content agencies have the expertise to create content as detailed as your business requires.
Content marketing team in-house
Pros
- Get to know your business’s goals and culture.
- Short-notice updates are possible
- They devote all of their time to working on your project
You can find out about the Cons.
- Hiring and onboarding take resources and time.
- It is possible that you have tunnel vision, or only view things in one way.
If you were forced to pick between two choices, which one would you select?
My recommendation is co-sourcing.
You can outsource certain roles or deliverables while hiring key employees who will work in-house full-time.
This is the ideal way to keep your best workers as permanent employees while also bringing on agency talent to cover the gaps.
Create a Content Marketing Team
Ready to start your team of content marketing? Follow these simple seven steps.
1. Select between In-House vs. Choose between In-house vs.
Technology advancements have allowed content teams the option to work in-house or remotely.
When people can physically see each other, it’s much easier to work together.
Working remotely allows you to reduce overhead costs. It may help to retain employees longer, as many workers in today’s market appreciate the flexibility of working anywhere.
My agency has a team of remote content marketers. The team is distributed around the globe. We use Skype and Slack for communication, project management software, and setting deadlines.
Below are a few questions to help you decide whether you would like to invite your team over to meet you.
- Do you have the budget to hire an office large enough for all your content marketing team?
- Do your teammates live in the same town as you?
- How often should you meet your team of content marketers?
If you answer yes to most of the questions, it may benefit your business to keep your team on site.
In all probability, a remote team will be required for several factors:
- What is the location of your talents? Are they spread out across different cities, or do they have a global presence?
- Do you have a team of remote employees or freelancers?
- Is it possible to work with team members digitally instead of in person? Digital nomads are likely to be more comfortable using Google Suite or Asana tools for video conferencing and texting updates on projects.
2. Create a team structure
A solid team structure can help you define different roles and responsibilities.
Decide which sub-teams you will report to different managers and leaders within your organization. Maintain a clear and organized structure to prevent confusion or overlapping of duties.
Here is an example team structure that’s very modern and simple. Your structure may differ depending on your industry or company goals.
When building your content marketing team, the Content Marketing Institute recommends that you use a professional model. In this model, individuals are hired who have a basic understanding of horizontal T but extensive knowledge about vertical T or a specific area.
They should also have a good understanding of SEO and other things, but they need to be able to use their expertise to write in-depth articles. The writers should also be familiar with SEO, and have a variety of other skills. However, they must use this knowledge to create in-depth content.
When planning the structure of your company, consider these factors: If you’re just starting, or don’t yet have enough money to hire all your staff, it is best to prioritize managing editors, writers, and graphic designers, before you look at more specialists roles.
3. List the people that you will need
Determine the team structure and list all the members of each subteam. Assign them a specific role that will help achieve the content marketing objectives.
Separate roles and keep them distinct. Focusing on one specific task can help you achieve better results.
I’ve included below a list of people you may want to hire as part of your content marketing team.
It is important to note that this list assumes only one person will be capable of performing each role. However, there may be people with great talent who can perform two or more roles. It is particularly true if you are just starting and can’t afford to hire people for each of these roles.
Consider the following members when building your team:
Chief Marketing Leader
The role of Chief Marketer may exist already, or it could be the founding of an organization.
This role is responsible for the alignment of your marketing with business development and sales. They must know the goals and targets set by the company to ensure the marketing team creates strategies and content that are in line with those goals.
Chief marketing officers also keep in contact with other company leaders. By using marketing strategies and campaigns that are effective, they ensure the content team can help move the business in the right direction.
Editor in Chief
A managing editor’s role is to oversee all marketing content, such as blog posts, videos, and other company publications. This person ensures that content is published consistently throughout each quarter.
A managing editor manages the editorial calendar and team editors. They serve as the bridge between marketing strategy and content creation.
Expert in SEO and Analytics
An expert in search engine optimization, such as someone with experience in SEO can assist you in optimizing your content marketing. The person responsible for the keyword research and SEO experiments, and for creating the content calendar.
They can also suggest creating lead magnets using popular content. You could suggest that popular content be used to create lead magnets.
This role may be outsourced to a consultant or you could hire a trainer for your employees or your business.
Editors
Typos, grammar mistakes, and other errors can be found in your content, whether you’re writing a blog, social media posts, or newsletters. This will make readers question what quality it is, regardless of how well-researched or written the article may be.
You can’t have a content marketing plan without editors. Editors make sure that the final product is ready and perfect for your audience.
Depending on the structure of your team, you can have in-house editors reporting directly to your managing editor. Or, you can hire freelance editors to polish and proofread each project. To create consistent content, you should consider hiring an in-house editor.
Content writers
It is important to hire writers who are knowledgeable about the industry.
You may want to hire writers who have experience creating content in a particular industry. For example, they might not be real estate brokers or agents.
You can be sure they are well informed about their subject if they’ve written articles for similar companies.
Multimedia Creators
Multimedia designers and creators should be part of your team. They create graphics, audiovisual material, and brand collateral that will support the content-marketing effort.
To make content accessible, audiences should know the visual language used by your brand. Infographics, GIFs, and videos can be created to complement the written word.
Multimedia creators are a great option if you’re looking to create 100% original imagery for your brand. They can be graphic artists, photographers, or videographers.
Content Distribution Teams
Once you’ve scaled, you can hire someone to handle your content distribution. Social media managers and email marketers can spread your content across a wider audience.
While you can hire someone to do these jobs, if your goal is to control the distribution channel, it’s best to employ people dedicated to this role.
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The list below is an excellent place to start. If you are looking to expand your team, you may have more people in mind.
4. The right tools at hand
For editors and writers, you can use WordPress, Joomla, Bluefish, and other IDEs. Adobe’s products, Final Cut Pro, and other graphics or video editing tools are great for multimedia creators.
As I mentioned, I use Slack and Skype to communicate with my colleagues. However, we also use Asana for managing our content calendar and to see the stage of each project.
Asana can be used to create a schedule of content.
5. Create an Onboarding Strategy
Now is the time to start onboarding your team. As a best practice, create onboarding documentation that managers and leaders can use to help them train new employees.
My company uses onboarding documents for content creators. I give them checklists to go through before they send in articles, and also the main objectives of my company.
You can send them documents you’ve prepared for new hires to get their feet on the ground. Together, you can review them.
Here are some best practices to follow when you onboard a new hire:
- Please sign and submit all pre-onboarding documents.
- Start by creating your onboarding documents using this template. You can use it to remind your new hires of what you taught them in their first few days, including who they should contact if there are any concerns. It also reiterates company goals.
- Then, help them get started on their first project. Help them to get going on their first task.
- After their first week, send an Onboarding Survey. You can use this to find out if your new employee is clear on their role, and how they are doing in the company.
6. Create Your Content Marketing Playbook
These are the elements you’ll need to build your playbook for content marketing.
Style Guide
A style guide helps designers and editors to understand the content you want to share and how it should be presented. Usually, visual elements, such as infographics and videos, are also applicable to blog posts.
Adobe provides a guide to designers on how to utilize the Adobe logo and what colors it uses in its material. It also explains the type of images that are displayed on the website.
For a comprehensive guide to creating your style guides, refer to the article from Canva.
A style guide example to aid in visual unity.
Brand Voice
A consistent brand voice is important, regardless of whether your writers are all different. This sets the tone for how they should write their articles. Is it formal or informal? Does this person have humor?
MailChimp provides a guide that helps employees to understand writing principles, goals, and formatting. It also explains other writing techniques and mechanics for MailChimp-branded content like blog posts and newsletters.
The Foundr Contributor Guidelines will tell you more about the brand voice of Foundr when it comes time to pitch guest articles.
Distributing Content
Your playbook will be more effective if you have a distribution guide. It will help to outline the strategy that you use for distributing content. You can use this guide to create newsletters or social media posts and to link to different publications or websites.
Include the following information in your distribution guide
- Content type (ebook, blog post, social media graphic, etc. )
- Copies the content type
- Use channels to promote the types of content
- Publish date
- Promotion dates on each channel
- Sending dates or other information to influential people
- Dates for paid boosting
