Content Marketing Team Structure: The Definitive Guide For 2022
Mihael D. Cacic
Published 8 Oct 2021
Updated 6 June 2022
Let’s not kid ourselves, sometimes there’s an “I” in “TEAM”…
As in “I am the one doing everything by myself.”
We’ve all been there; not fun.
Maybe that’s exactly why you’re here too. You’ve been spreading yourself too thin trying to level up your company’s content marketing efforts.
Or maybe you’ve been getting dirty looks from your gold-star employee because they’re overwhelmed by the vast volume of work content marketing requires.
Or you’re slowly contemplating on only beginning the content marketing route.
Either way, by now you’re fully aware that you’re gonna need some new coworkers. A content marketing team of gold-star employees, a well-oiled machine, a best-case scenario.
A good team will seamlessly create regular content that will raise your company’s value, leads and sales.
Sounds too good to be true?
It could be if you’re not willing to put some serious brain power into carefully structuring your team.
To give you a head start, here’s our DEFINITIVE guide on how to structure a kick-ass content marketing team.
No nonsense job positions, just a quick recap of everything (and everyone) you need to consider before investing your time and money into a team that might end up weighing you down if put together incorrectly.
Skip To Sections:
- Essential Team Members Throughout the Content Marketing Process
- Building An In-House Team vs. Outsourcing to An Agency
- Recruiting Content Marketing Team Members in Practice
Before you jump headfirst into hiring team members, consider hiring a freelance content marketing team like 21writers. You’ll get a team of experienced marketers working for you without having to hire or train new employees!
If you’re interested, shoot me an email at Mihael@21writers.com.
Chapter One:
Content Marketing Team Members
Essential Team Members Throughout the Content Marketing Process
Firstly, who the essential team members are is entirely subjective to your company’s content marketing objectives.
Think of these team member positions more as fluid roles, which may not always be defined by their title. Thus, the structure of your team shouldn’t be built on dry job titles, but rather on the skill, experience, and talent, useful in each stage of the content marketing process.
As far as our experience goes, at the beginning the workload won’t require as many team members and some will be wearing multiple hats, depending on their skills.
However, as demand develops further, you may recognize the need for a few more members.
Along the way you will see who might bring additional value.
The worst thing you can do at this point is pile content marketing assignments on employees with similar professions that already have full-time jobs. There’re only so many hours in a working day.
Just don’t be that guy.
So, who are these talented people that will drive your content marketing from paper to success?
Stage 1: Content Strategy & Plan
Let’s start with the big kahunas
The big picture thinkers.
Content Marketing Officer / Chief Content Officer / VP of Content Marketing / Content Strategist
Employee of many job titles, this person in their core, is the leader.
They decide where, when and how the process of content marketing will be developing.
In alignment with business goals, performance metrics and branding, the content marketing officer narrates the central story being portrayed to the public.
Their storytelling is supported by a deep understanding of the company’s mission, it is the silver line of content marketing.
Often the role is taken by a C-level or some other higher-level employee from the marketing branch. If that’s not an option, we’ve noticed that the role perfectly suits a content strategist that is willing to tell people what to do.
Knowledgeable in their specific branch, they are more than capable of understanding what type of content is needed to serve the audience.
They know how it should be structured to uplift the company’s visibility and how it needs to be tweaked based on performance metrics and trends.
Count yourself lucky if they’re willing to take the responsibility, you’ll get an amazingly competent leader on your side.
✅ RESPONSIBILITIES
- deep knowledge of the company’s business objectives and branding, audience persona, content marketing process and trends
- ensuring collective awareness of the content marketing direction
- development of the overall content marketing strategy
- constant communication with other company leaders to support goal orientation within content marketing initiatives
- establishing the budget plan and distributing funds
- determining risk management systems
🤖 TECHNICAL SKILLS
- content strategy platforms
- project management software
- budget planning
- content management systems
- Microsoft Office / Google Docs
💖 PERSONALITY TRAITS
- data-driven
- assertive
- passionate
- imaginative
- gut instinct for opportunities
- understands people
- goal oriented
- good communicator
💰 SALARY: $177,733 per year
Content Marketing Manager
By the side of the captain of the ship, there stands a person with a detailed map, itinerary, and a to-do list for every crew member.
In content marketing terms, this would be the content marketing manager.
They take the content marketing strategy and put it to real work: assigning who is doing what, when and where.
To ensure that everything gets executed with the expected quality and time, the clearly defined organization of all content marketing assets is vital.
It takes a special kind of personality to keep tabs on every piece of content produced, but let’s not forget that some of the content marketing assets to be organized are human beings.
Apart from mad project management skills, the content manager should have good people skills as well.
They should recognize talent in people so that every team member can contribute at their maximum potential and not waste time with tasks they aren’t able to do well.
When it comes to team morale, the content manager should be someone who can motivate their coworkers, inspiring them to keep going and giving it their all.
Accountable for a stable volume of creating and publishing content, the content manager will make sure everyone gets supported in terms of material and motivation.
✅ RESPONSIBILITIES
- managing and organizing all content marketing assets via editorial calendar
- ensuring resources and clear direction in content creation and distribution efforts
- coordinating team members and ensuring their correct assignment
- defining and appointing tasks
- overlooking the work process
- ensuring everyone is on-task and motivating
🤖 TECHNICAL SKILLS
- project and task management software
- content management systems
- Microsoft Office / Google Docs
💖PERSONALITY TRAITS
- highly organized
- talented at coordination
- great at time management
- strong communications skills
- empathetic
- supportive
- good at reading people
- patient
💰 SALARY: $103,000 per year
SEO Expert
Defining content marketing strategy is heavily supported by Search Engine Optimization or simply put; optimizing content the way Google loves it.
The SEO expert is one of the tech guys that help direct the content strategy with their data-driven insights.
Conducting keyword research, implementing content ideas and technical SEO, tracking SEO metrics indicative of content success, and identifying link-building opportunities will help bring your brand on the first site on Google search.
You know that nobody ever goes to the second site.
Bigger companies really increase their revenue by having an in-house SEO expert, for smaller companies however, it’s fiscally smarter to outsource one as an advisor.
BUT! The SEO services are included If you take our advice on hiring a content strategist to lead your content marketing process.
✅ RESPONSIBILITIES
- using SEO techniques that will get the content in front of the audience on Google
- developing on-page, off-page, technical and content SEO strategies
- demonstrating how to implement SEO techniques to content creators
- conducting keyword research to lead the strategy
- informing what creates traffic and leads
- inspiring creation of trending types of content
- keeping track of SEO metrics and reporting key insights
- updating old content with SEO tactics
- researching and trying plug-ins
- identifying link-building opportunities
🤖 TECHNICAL SKILLS
- SEO and SEM
- HTML, CSS
- keyword research tools (Ahrefs, SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, Linkio)
- SEO management tools (Moz, Cyfe, SpyFu, Google PageSpeed Insights)
- link-building
💖 PERSONALITY TRAITS
- tech-savvy and data-driven
- logical
- curious
- adaptive to changes
- willing to experiment
- good at explaining and teaching
💰 SALARY: $55,895 per year
Stage 2: Content Creation
Next, you‘ll need fishes somewhat smaller in size but major in significance. They give everybody else in the team something to do.
They turn ideas into reality.
Here are the content creators of substance in the content marketing process.
Writers
You’re diving into content marketing, meaning you’ll move forward from quick sales pitches to longer form content.
Naturally, such content will require a different kind of expertise from your content writers. You’ve probably been working with standard copywriters that excel in shorter types of written content such as ads, emails, websites, and social media.
They’re great for grabbing attention quickly and communicating key messages that seal the deal but, now you’ll need significantly more substance.
Look out for content writers as they are experienced in building educational, informing and engaging long form content.
Let your main priority in search of the right writer be the talent.
Check out their expertise and experiences based on their portfolios, social media accounts and possible testimonials. Talented writers will get you a good story and tell it the right way.
Long form content demands a great sense of entertainment to engage the reader from beginning to an end.
That sense is based on a natural gift in writing, but built upon strong investigative skills and solid understanding of your target audience.
You’ll recognize good writing by the spark. The spark that will keep you interested in those portfolios.
✅ RESPONSIBILITIES
- professional deep research of given topic
- pitching content topics
- skillful marketing communication with target audience
- basic knowledge of SEO to support writing with keyword research
- delivering requested content on time in an expected format
🤖 TECHNICAL SKILLS
- proficient in the English Language (spelling, grammar, style)
- marketing copywriting expertise
- Microsoft Office / Google Docs
- reference management tools
- project management systems and communication tools
- grammar, style and spell checker tools
- basic SEO and keyword knowledge
💖 PERSONALITY TRAITS
- powerful storytelling
- investigative
- insightful
- smart
- entertaining
- interesting
- able to take critique
- adaptive
- independent
💰 SALARY: $48,683 per year
Designers
The main players in a content creation team might be the writers, but you know raw text turns out dry. A bit boring. That’s where the key support players come in the form of designers.
Their priority is to create lead magnets to support and strengthen the written word.
Long form content — even when written as engagingly as possible — can often be quickly skimmed by the readers. We’ve gotten used to receiving information by the speed of lightning and, well, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Before your reader gets to the in-depth reading, they will quickly scan if your article includes what they’re interested in.
The easiest way of leading their gaze is with images, infographics, charts, videos, etc. Whatever is suitable for the content, your brand’s voice and audience persona.
Before rushing to find a designer, define what kind of visual design you’ll be including in the posts.
For different channels and formats of visual content, you’ll need different kinds of professionals: photographer, videographer, video editor — If you’re able to afford only one of them, choose a graphic designer skilled enough to deliver a wide array of imagery.
Again, rely on their portfolios.
✅ RESPONSIBILITIES
- providing visual content for all content marketing campaigns: graphics, charts, infographics, videos, etc.
- following contemporary trends in visual communication
- delivering visual content in a final state
- adapting creatives to brand’s visual identity
- ensuring fast and efficient creation of imagery
- being proficient in graphic design software and constantly learning
🤖 TECHNICAL SKILLS
- graphic design software (Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator)
- HTML and CSS
- content management systems
- project management and communication software
💖 PERSONALITY TRAITS
- creative
- imaginative
- tech-savvy
- eye for contemporary aestheticÂ
- adaptive
- able to take critique
- efficient under pressure
- good at time management
💰 SALARY: $50,222 per year
Stage 3: Content Review & Improvement
Love them or hate them, here come the perfectionists.
Editor
It would be great if your whole team would be a team of perfectionists, because then you wouldn’t need one head perfectionist to rule them all.
But let’s be honest, it’s not in everybody’s blood; which doesn’t mean they’re not great at what they do. It’s normal to make mistakes, however, it’s smart to have different set of eyes to catch them.
That’s where content editors come in to make sure everything looks perfect before it gets published; their job is to perfect.
With extreme attention to detail, content editors will save your brand from embarrassing mistakes that can take away from showcasing your expertise.
There is no room for typos, grammatical errors, or sloppy storytelling if you want to present your company in the best light possible.
The editor will not only edit the text, they will also perfect everything in the visual sense.
They will tweak the layout of the elements in the post, edit the text format to look inviting and overall apply changes on the stylistic properties of the website so everything looks excellent.
Entrusting this much responsibility should not be taken lightly.
When looking for an editor, pick someone highly educated in language and experienced in (content) marketing communication.
The role should be entrusted to someone with good expertise so your costumers don’t start calling you out on basic mistakes and losing trust in you.
✅ RESPONSIBILITIES
- proofreading and editing all the content being produced
- making sure everything is perfect before publishing
- getting rid of grammatical, style, punctuation errors
- fixing the visual aspect of content online – formatting, layout, visual flow
- uploading and updating content online
🤖 TECHNICAL SKILLS
- Deep understanding of the English language and marketing communication
- grammatic, stylistic and spell checking tools
- content management systems
- basic web coding language like HTML or XML
- Microsoft Office / Google Docs
💖 PERSONALITY TRAITS
- a natural knack for language
- excellent writing skills
- extreme attention to detail
- perfectionism
- respective
- helping
- willing to educate
💰 SALARY: $59,572 per year
Stage 4: Content Distribution
What is content without these professional hypebeasts? Something only you, and nobody else, would look at.
Distribution Strategist / Demand Generation Specialist / Content Promoter
Once all the strategic, creative and editorial efforts are through, content gets published.
And now what? Desperately waiting for your future customers to maybe notice your fresh content?
Pointless.
Instead of waiting, find someone to professionally hype your content up, so no one will miss it!
Again, a job of many titles; this role essentially employs somebody to distribute content, so it gets in front of the target audience.
In order to achieve that, they will have to know the audience in-depth, understand what they are interested in and where they will be able to see it.
Since almost everybody uses social media, that’s where your content promoter will get them. Meaning this person is a pro at leveraging every aspect of the main social media platforms.
In addition, they will work through other channels as well in order to get to audiences, unreachable on social media.
Yes, those exist.
Basically, the content promoter could be someone that’s social media expert and email marketer, all-in-one.
The best ones will be communicating with external publications, partner organizations and influencers on social media too.
Whatever to get your content noticed and get people excited about it.
✅ RESPONSIBILITIES
- building brand, content and product awareness
- distributing and promoting the final content via owned, earned or paid content distribution channels
- distribution strategy for marketing campaigns
- building and maintaining relationships with target audiences
- building and maintaining business ties with business partners, third-party sites for guest-posting, publications, and influencers
- finding fresh and trending opportunities for content promotion
- presenting your brand in the best light on all media channels
- delivering monthly statistics reports, presenting growth of audience reach through used channels
🤖 TECHNICAL SKILLS
- digital marketing automation platforms
- social media business platforms
- email automation
- web metrics analysis (Google Analytics)
- content management systems
💖 PERSONALITY TRAITS
- exceptionally sociable
- friendly and effective communicator
- strong negotiator
- pleasing personality
- good at reading people
- analytical
💰 SALARY: $78,602 per year
Stage 5: Content Success Analysis
To round the content marketing cycle, here are the people that‘ll tell you how great of a job (or not?) the team has been doing.
Analytics Expert
Ideally, every member of your team should understand the analytics in their own field to execute their responsibilities effectively.
However, the truth is that your team will be working on whatever they are talented for, and numbers are just not everybody’s gift at birth.
If you do find somebody that will help your whole team base their endeavors on tangible data findings, your road to success will get a bit less bumpy.
Once data supports creative ideas, there’s a lot less chance they will flop.
So, the analytics expert should be someone that is able to take any kind of analytics and interpret them in a way that other team members will understand.
But first — to get some tangible data — they will conduct quantitative analysis from web metrics and qualitative analysis from your customers.
Providing valuable insights into the effectiveness of efforts your team made, they will be able to advise on the further direction that your company’s content marketing should take.
In some companies the analytics expert is usually already there before they start thinking about the content marketing team.
In case you already have one of those in your company, consider getting some advice from them first.
✅ RESPONSIBILITIES
- setting up tracking systems on every platform for measuring effectiveness of campaigns
- determining tracking methods and ambitions
- conducting quantitative statistical analysis from measured metrics
- collecting qualitative data from internal and external sources regarding content
- employing intelligence software, structuring dashboards for data reports
- reporting KPIs in an understandable manner
- recognizing and fixing technical usability issues
🤖 TECHNICAL SKILLS
- qualitative and quantitative analysis software
- web analytics platforms
- programming languages like SQL, Python, HTML, CSS
- data visualization
💖 PERSONALITY TRAITS
- analytical
- tech-savvy
- curious
- detail-oriented
- able to convey statistics data in a comprehensible way for any layman
💰 SALARY: $72,798 per year
Chapter Two:
In-House Vs. Agency
Building An In-House Team vs. Outsourcing to An Agency
Good content marketing is cost-effective, but what does it cost?
Well, you’re paying either to (1) hire an agency or to (2) build your own in-house content team.
A lot of factors define the overall annual investment in content marketing, so comparing costs between the two options is not quite that simple.
One or the other could be beneficial for you, but which one depends on the size and the strategic objectives of your company.
Content marketing requires expertise and resources that will leave its mark in the budget.
Carrying an in-house team will be feasible and extremely beneficial for larger companies, however, for start-ups or smaller companies that might not be the case.
At the very least, new full-time employees will need workspace, hardware and software equipment and salaries with benefits.
They will give their full work day worth of content marketing efforts back to the company, which is of great value if your strategy requires high production volume.
At the beginning of content marketing implementation, content production will not be as demanding, meaning you won’t need a complete team right away, so you should check out the offerings of content marketing agencies – like mine.
They’ll have experienced and skilled team members on hand and you will not be responsible for their office space, tools or benefits.
Of course, your company’s content marketing will not be their only priority; there’s only so much time they can provide. But, working with many other players in the industry gives them competitive advantage and inside scoop that your in-house employees might miss.
To help your final decision, we’ve summed up the pros and cons of both in-house teams and outsourcing to agencies.
IN-HOUSE
🟢 PROS
- full-time invested in your content marketing projects
- emergencies and updates executed on short notice
- complete understanding of company’s objectives, voice, approaches and expectations
🔻 CONS
- having to provide physical working space, office equipment, software
- requires time and money to recruit, interview and onboard new hires
- access to most talented employees is limited on office location proximity
💲 COSTS
$53,886 / month*
(+ recruitment costs + benefits + office costs + equipment + software)
*for a full team of mentioned roles
AGENCY
🟢 PROS
- highly experienced professionals on hand
- having inside scoop from working with other industry players
- staying on top of trending tactics
- access to the newest technologies
- access to a larger pool of skilled professionals around the world
🔻 CONS
- working with other clients; you are not the only priority
- slower response on emergencies
- not every agency is experienced in your niche, takes time to find the right one
💲 COSTS
$1,000 – $25,000 / month*
*depending on the requirements; type, volume and quality of content
There’s also a third option: a mixed approach.
You get someone to create a strategy or write the content for you while you take care of what’s left. Which isn’t much.
If you’re interested in getting help, click here to learn more about my content marketing consultant services.
Chapter Three:
Recruiting
Recruiting Content Marketing Team Members in Practice
Hunting for the best candidates can be a dread.
The hunt itself is cost and time-consuming, imagine how much worse it is if the catch is bad. We’ve shown you what you should look for in candidates, but where would you even begin?
Say no more!
Here are 5 practical tips to help you start building your content marketing team.
- Know exactly who you’re looking for. If you read this article, you’re already on the right track. We’ve condensed the characteristics of every essential content team member, now it’s on you to consider who would be essential for your business purposes right now. In-depth research of job position descriptions will help you set the budget and expectations for each new hire. Look out for extensive articles like this one to gain the most insight into the job positions.
- Get a word out that you‘re looking for new employees. As simple as it sounds; put it on the company’s bulletin board, social media, website, create targeted ads; Let the talent come to you.
- Check out the job marketplaces. That’s where people looking for a job accumulate, obviously. Job search websites, LinkedIn, and freelancer marketplaces are crawling with people that would love a full-time or even just a one-time gig.
- Look for the hungry. Chances are somebody has already been in your business emails or DMs, extremely willing to show what’ve they got. Or one of your employees knows someone that knows someone eager. Maybe take a student to practice under your wing. Talent might be just under your nose.
- Prepare insightful interview questions. Once you’ve brought together a group of perfect on-paper candidates, you’ll have to sift through them one last time. Interview them thoroughly about their knowledge and experience, so you don’t get burned.
Don’t want to deal with the hassle of hiring a whole content marketing team?
Don’t have the resources to build, onboard, and support all of them right now?
The least we can do is to get you started with the professionally built content strategy and then also create top-notch long-form content for you.
Okay, that’s not the least. Our free 30-minute consulting is the least; really, you’re missing out on a great offer here. Don’t be shy, slide into our business email at mihael@21writers.com and we’ll see what we can help you with.
Very good article! We will be linking to this great article on our website. Keep up the great writing.