How to Resource Your Content Team: Part 1 — Talent

This is part one of a two-part series on how to resource your content efforts.

I’ll help you by outlining some advice and recommendations, but please understand, that there is no perfect approach to resourcing (both in terms of tools and talent).

The common threads here will be simplicity and agility. So much so that I originally wanted to condense this into one newsletter. However, such a topic needs to include nuance to provide a proper understanding.

Therefore, I will dedicate a newsletter to talent and tooling resources respectively. Let’s begin by looking at how to construct your team.

Don’t Wait, Start Small & Scale

Traditionally, thinking about building out a marketing/content function within an organization has been a daunting task. However, as Robert Mighall has articulated, the marketing playbook is changing.

Companies can and must deploy cost-effective agile marketing talent sooner in the company's lifecycle. Gone are the days of waiting for product-market fit and significant capital resources to hire a senior Director/VP/CMO.

While traditional thinking tells you this makes sense (to an extent), you end up delaying the growth of your company by not establishing an audience and distribution channels from the onset.

Even if your product is still being developed, you should already be finding and attracting your core audience and building valuable brand equity by publishing content.

When you are ready to publicly launch your product, there will already be an established distribution platform, accelerating your sales pipeline.

This will open the door for discussions with prospective clients and partners.

If you wait to build an audience, you stall your entire growth trajectory.

Someone Needs to Own Content

As I wrote previously, it’s important to make content a collaborative effort, both inside and outside of your organization, but you still need a designated person to be accountable for your content marketing.

If multiple people are responsible for something, no one is responsible for it, and tasks fall through the cracks.

This person must have a strategic vision with a holistic view and be able to execute with a mindset on output.

Ideally, this person should have a background and experience in content creation, even if lacking traditional marketing or domain expertise, although those are certainly desired skills as well.

As discussed, if you want to be lean and agile, this person doesn’t necessarily need to be an in-house employee, and in many cases, the best solution will be outside talent.

For clarity’s sake, let’s refer to this person as the team lead.

The number one priority for the team lead is to put your organization in the best possible position to achieve your desired content outcomes.

This includes keeping the wheels moving in the right direction and seeing through projects from inception and production to distribution and publication.

In other words, this person is the glue that holds everything together.

Potential Functions

This next section is not a required list of necessary job functions, but a breakdown of potential functions your organization might need.

The needs, goals and budget you have will dictate how you build your team.

View this as a glossary of information you can cite when needed.

Before we dive in, let’s address a few caveats:

• It’s worth repeating, none of these roles need to be in-house employees, and chances are the best approach for you is to source your talent in various ways.

• One person/resource can sometimes fill multiple functions depending on skillset and scope. Alternatively, depending on the size of your operation you might need multiple resources dedicated to the same function.

• Tools and tech (which again will be covered next time) can sometimes fill or aid these functions.

We covered the Team Lead function at the top, so we don’t need to revisit that here but do remember that is your quintessential role.

Without further ado, let’s go through the other functions:

Development: This is a function that is often “borrowed” from another department and not always seen as an important component to have dedicated to content but can allow your content to stand out and expand the breadth of your projects. If you’ve loaned this resource from your tech/dev department, your projects will never be prioritized and will often be left on the back burner for a slow day at the office.

Dynamic content and rich media are big-time differentiators in the content game, especially when developing your media platform. So if you can create content such as interactive infographics, video, and dynamic HTML Web pages, you’ll increase engagement and time spent interacting with your content.

Ideally, this person will have Web development skills and will be able to work in HTML, CSS, and a variety of other languages. It's a huge plus if this person also has design abilities, as that could eliminate the need to hire a separate UX Designer

Data analysis: This is also a person who is often shared or borrowed from another department, but again, you’ll run into the same issue; the person will likely be too busy with other projects to dedicate enough time to content initiatives.

This person has one of what I refer to as “bridge” roles ( the marketing team’s connection to other departments within the organization). This person is your connection to the business intelligence, analytics, or possibly campaign/account management team depending on how your organization is constructed.

When it comes to producing content from primary data, it’s imperative to have this type of close collaboration. Curated content and second and third-party data is great, but first-party research is even better and the kind of content that garners a lot of attention.

This person is of course data-driven and inquisitive by nature, but ideally should also be able to translate data into easy-to-understand information for the rest of the team, so this person should be a good communicator.

This person creates the foundation on which you build the rest of your content. You not only want this person to be able to mine for information he or she is told to find but also to have the understanding and ambition to find valuable tidbits on his or her own, finding new opportunities.

Design: As previously alluded to, the best-case scenario would be to find a UX designer who also has web development skills.

Just as important as UX, you need a talented graphic designer who understands your industry and can translate complex ideas into simple imagery.

This person should be an expert in branding and help you flesh out a strong corporate identity, or if you already have one, be able to offer up ways to improve and have the ability to work within it, to maintain brand consistency.

This person will work in close collaboration with your copywriter and developer to unlock the power of visual storytelling.

Copywriter/Ghost Writer: This person obviously needs to hail from a strong writing background and doesn’t necessarily need a marketing background, but that would be strongly preferred.

It’d be great if this person understands the industry you’re in and comes from a similar background, but what’s even more important is this person isn’t just a grammatical wizard but also understands how to develop digital content: how people consume content, as well as SEO writing and what attracts an audience.

If this person doesn’t come from your industry or have an innate understanding of it--which would be ideal--this person needs to quickly get up to speed and learn all the various nuances of your industry.

All too often, we see marketing copy that just looks too much like marketing jargon, showing a lack of understanding of the product/industry.

Product Marketing: This is probably your most important organizational bridge. Your product marketing person will link marketing and your tech/product, which is where we often see a major disconnect in many organizations.

Not only should your product marketer know the ins and outs of your own organization, but he or she should be a big-picture thinker with a holistic view of the industry and insight into future market developments.

This person will play a crucial role in the ideation process when you brainstorm what content to build that will satisfy your audience.

This person will also be tasked with making sure your story and strategy remain aligned by ensuring your content meshes well with the products you’re selling.

Digital Marketing: This is a crucial--and sometimes overlooked--role. This is a person who needs to wear multiple hats and excel in several areas.

This person should be able to maintain and build your social and Web/SEO presence, manage your digital advertising campaigns as well as email campaigns and oversee lead generation.

Your digital marketer should have a multichannel mindset and be tech-savvy, knowing the latest and best technologies to build, publish, distribute and track your content.

It might be wise to acquire Marketing Ops talent, if you’re looking for specialization in tools and tech, making sure all of the “piping” is in order.

This person also plays the key role of being the liaison between marketing and sales. It’s a must to have sales and marketing aligned to ensure your story has consistency and fluidity, and most importantly, commercial success.

This is an area where there will be variance depending on the size and scope of your organization. Given the large range of skills and tasks of a digital marketer, this could be broken into multiple roles, such as SEO specialist, social media manager, email marketing manager, and inbound marketer.

PR & Communications: This will be your go-to person when it comes to obtaining earned media. This person must be well-connected within your industry and leverage strategic partnerships to land premium placement of your content outside of owned and paid media.

This top-line networker should also be able to extend opportunities to the paid media realm and work closely with your events manager to secure additional platforms to tell your story.

Although your PR person’s primary role will be distribution, the person should also have expertise in brand positioning and story building to provide strategic insights and work closely with the copywriter to create content.

Your PR person will know what is most interesting for journalists and industry influencers to cover and what topics they want to cover.

Events: This person needs to be well-connected on the outside and closely integrated with everyone on the inside. This person needs to be well organized and a great project manager, being able to juggle multiple tasks.

Not only will this person work closely with PR to land additional platforms for your content elsewhere, but will also be in charge of organizing internal events that need to be closely aligned with your story to further cement your brand positioning and forge thought leadership.

Event strategy should extend beyond brick-and-mortar initiatives to include webinars, podcasts, video series, and live feeds. Therefore, your events manager should have a digital understanding as well. As previously discussed, these can even become new sources of revenue.

This sums up the various working parts that can make a content machine. When constructing and maintaining your team, there are three keys to success:

• Hire/source multiskilled, digital, and tech-savvy talent.

• Ensure close integration and collaboration.

• Align your story and strategy. After that, allow the story to unfold right before your eyes.

See you next week when we talk about tech and tools.