One of the common questions when starting a Content Marketing strategy is how to staff it. Is this something you can do with your current team, or are you going to have to make a lot of expensive hires?

There are five essential roles that need to be fulfilled if you are going to take Content Marketing seriously.

 

1. Champion

This is the person at the top level who really believes that Content Marketing is the right approach to reach the ideal community. They must advocate it and approve the energy, time, and money necessary to make it work.

 

2. Strategy Holder

This is the person who holds the long-term vision. They know where they want to see it grow, and how they plan to measure its success. He/she is thinking through new places to feature the content and new content forms that haven’t been explored yet.

 

3. Managing Editor

This is the linchpin of your Content Marketing: someone who owns the day-to-day operations of producing and distributing the content.

His/her responsibilities include:

• Creating a content calendar for the upcoming year
• Assigning tasks to others on the team
• Giving final approval on all content
• Managing the tone of content
• Ensuring consistent and on-time publication
• Managing relationships with any vendors or freelancers

 

4. Creatives

These are the people who do the actual writing, editing, designing, mixing, recording, and proofreading of your content. Writers may be asked to do independent research, or to speak with subject matter experts.

 

5. Distributor

This person uploads content to its digital home and promotes it in the approved channels. They harvest data about how well your content is doing, and manage the community interaction if people leave comments. This person should minimally have a basic understanding of SEO, and be very comfortable in a digital atmosphere.

 

There can be a lot of crossover of these roles. Your champion and strategy holder might be the same person, and your Managing Editor might be uploading the articles and managing the community interaction.

 

Insource, hire, freelance?

The champion role has to be someone already in the organization. Without a champion, your Content Marketing strategy is doomed to fail.

The Strategy Holder and the Managing Editor are best filled through full-time roles (they may be one and the same). You want these people very close to the heart of your organization and as committed as possible to their success. You can seek out competent consultants to perform this function for you on a monthly basis, but plan to replace them with more permanent hires within a year.

Unless you have very talented people on staff who have the time, much of the creative work is better outsourced to regular freelancers. Find people whose style you like and pay them per piece. Many of these people enjoy the freedom of working from home and are not looking for a full-time role.

The role of the distributor requires the least amount of skill and commitment. It could be done by someone internally with extra time, or even given to a virtual private assistant for some time. However, community interaction should never be outsourced or relegated to someone who doesn’t get the big picture. Unless he/she is already a key internal stakeholder, this person should notify the right parties when a comment needs to be responded to.

 

Quick example:

For their start-up, James and Rohit want to start a weekly podcast aimed at their target community. James is extremely excited about the idea, convinces Rohit about the need for it, and starts to plan through all the people he wants to interview.

They hire Suhani part-time to help them execute the podcast. Every month, Suhani meets with James and gets a vision for whom he wants to talk to and what the tone should sound like. Suhani contacts the guests, manages their scheduling, and sends them the topics to be covered.

Afterwards, Suhani gives the audio file to an audio editor she has sourced who cleans up the audio and adds an intro and outro. She sends the file to another freelancer to get it written into a transcript. Suhani uploads the podcast herself and promotes it in places she and James have worked on.

In this case, James is the Champion and Strategy Holder. Suhani is the Managing Editor and the Distributor. James is technically also the Creative since he is doing the interviews, but Suhani has also brought in two freelancers to help finish the job.

 

Staffing is a key part of every strategic initiative. For your Content Marketing to be successful, make sure you have the right people in the right roles.