More and more marketers are recognizing the value of content marketing and are investing in it accordingly – 70% of marketers are now actively investing in content marketing.
If you don’t have a well-thought-out marketing strategy, you will mostly likely not see good results.
Content strategists are in high demand due to the growing need for businesses to have a good online presence. They are paid an average of $62,424 per year.
The main job of a strategist is to develop and implement plans for achieving goals. To do this, they need to be able to think creatively, be organized, and have strong analytical and problem-solving skills. They also need to be able to communicate effectively, both in writing and verbally.
This guide will walk you through.
What does a Content Strategist do?
Content strategists work with content creators, such as writers and designers, to ensure that each piece of content aligns with the brand’s overall goals. As a content strategist, you will be responsible for planning, managing, and executing a brand’s content strategy across various marketing channels. You will work with content creators, such as writers and designers, to ensure that each piece of content aligns with the brand’s overall goals.
A digital marketing professional usually has at least 4-5 years of experience in the industry and often also has a relevant bachelor’s degree.
The primary role is to develop a content strategy that meets various organizational goals such as driving brand awareness, lead generation and conversion.
There’s a lot that comes in between developing and executing a winning content strategy, though. For instance:
- Conducting audience research and studying available data to understand what new content to produce and why.
- Planning content ideas that tie back to business goals and target audience needs.
- Maintaining consistency in content production by developing a key brand message and content value proposition, creating brand voice guidelines, style guides, accessibility guidelines, and related templates.
- Setting up and maintaining a streamlined content workflow and editorial calendar for content operation and production.
- Distributing content on various channels including social media while also getting feedback on it.
- Reporting that involves studying metrics showing its performance.
- Repurposing and updating/refreshing content to get more mileage from content your team creates and ensuring all content is up to date to offer the most value to the target audience.
The role of a content strategist may vary depending on an organization’s needs. Some organizations look for content strategists who focus on content marketing while others look for content strategists who focus on understanding analytics.
The effectiveness of a business’s content marketing also affects how well it can meet its goals.
Key skills a content strategist need
Since a content strategist focuses on content planning, production, analysis, distribution, and management, you need to have the following skills to succeed:
1. Storytelling
This skill is key for branding while working closely with the content team including writers, UX designers, and editors.
2. Empathy
When creating digital content, it is important to not only focus on the production, but also to make key decisions such as what formats to create the content in and which channels to use.
You need to have a deep understanding of your target audience and their pain points to develop buyer personas, brand tone of voice, style guide, and content strategy.
You need to be able to empathize with your audience to understand what they need, what kind of content will help them, and how to make that content resonate with them.
GatherContent provides an easy way to document brand voice and style consistency by providing embedded instructions.
You can also add checklists to content templates for consistency – reducing back and forth between team members. For example, here’s a submission checklist for a blog post template:
3. Writing
Most importantly, you need to write well. This is not surprising.
Tools that help with writing, like Jasper or Copymatic, have not been used by enough people to be considered mainstream. People who promotes ideas or products through written content (content marketers) still need to be able to explain difficult concepts themselves.
Eli Schwartz has transitioned from being the Director of Growth at SurveyMonkey to now being an SEO and Growth Consultant for various well-known brands, such as IBM, Shutterstock, WordPress, Zendesk, and Quora.
He attributes a lot of his success to his capacity to explain complex concepts in a clear and concise way.
Brian Dean is known for his ability to explain complex concepts in a way that is easy to understand. This makes his blog a good resource for non-technical marketers.
You should have good long-form writing skills as a strategist, and you should also be able to write well to create and help produce top-quality content.
4. SEO
The majority of traffic to websites and a large portion of revenue comes from organic traffic from search engines.
While social media platform algorithms are constantly changing, Google remains a relatively stable source of traffic for many businesses.
The power of SEO comes from its ability to connect businesses with users who are already interested in what they have to offer.
Brands can produce compelling content for users at the top of the sales funnel, guides for users in the middle or bottom of the funnel, and optimize their product pages for searchers who are most likely to buy.
If you want to get your content seen by using search engines, you need to be good at keyword research, understand what visitors are looking for, and optimize your content accordingly.
5. Social media
Having social media skills is one of the most important things for a content marketer.
Although it is common for startups and small companies to want to hire an individual that is able to handle both content and social media, this skill is not exclusive to these types of businesses. Large companies also value employees with this experience.
For many companies, organic search is the primary source of website traffic, with social media accounting for a significant proportion of traffic.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram provide opportunities to connect with potential customers where they already are.
Eden Bidani, says that sharing content on social media is not enough, you have to be strategic about it. She recommends a 1-3-5 rule.
It’s not enough to publish content with lots of keywords and expect it to do well. You need to have good social media skills to share your content effectively and respond to comments and engagement to help it reach more people.
Great content marketers know how to engage their audience on each platform by posting the right types of content in the right format.
Many companies promote their company podcasts on LinkedIn, but many of these promotional posts lack value or are not on topic. By improving your social media skills, you can create posts that will be more likely to drive value for readers and make them curious enough to click through to the podcast.
It is ideal to not only promote content on social media, but also to listen to your target audience to understand their pain points better.
6. Editorial skills
This skill is essential skillset for you to create and document a brand’s editorial style and manage your content production on a schedule.
After you assign tasks, you can choose a status for each assignment from the workflow. GatherContent uses these status updates to show what is in the pipeline and what stage it is in the workflow.
You can also get an overview of the same information in a calendar format.
7. Data analysis skills
One of the most important aspects of content marketing that is often overlooked is measuring the performance of your content. So many marketers are in a hurry to publish new, shiny blog posts without first looking at their data to determine what was effective and what wasn’t.
The three aspects of the job are coming up with the content, getting people to see it, and determining how effective it is. If you’re not constantly checking how well your content is doing, you’re not going to improve. You’re destined to fail.
A content marketer needs to be skilled in analyzing SEO metrics and the traffic each post generates.
Sales tracking should be set up in order to see how many leads, SQLs, and customers each piece of content brings.
Jimmy Daly, CEO of Superpath, believes that in order to be a good content marketer, one should be analytical and understand how to use spreadsheets. Furthermore, they should be able to take data from various sources and combine it to see how their content is performing in relation to business objectives. Doing so will help them understand if the work they are doing is effective in helping the company reach its goals.
Content doesn’t live on a pink cloud anymore.
Content marketing must be closely linked to the company’s overall marketing strategy and business goals. Content marketers must constantly assess which pieces of content are helping the business achieve its goals and which are not.
A strategist needs the ability to interpret data so they can explain the reasoning behind the content strategy they create.
8. Technical skills
Although strategists do not have to be experts in information technology, it is beneficial for them to know the capabilities and restrictions of the tools that their organization uses. In this case, it is helpful to have strong technical skills.
9. Communication and coaching
Strategists must be able to clearly articulate their thoughts on content goals, audience needs, feedback on content production, and the strategy they create.
As a strategist, you are not only responsible for creating content, but also for working with others. Therefore, it is important to be able to explain the rationale behind your strategy to your team and stakeholders.
10. Content promotion and distribution
The key to successful content distribution is to make a plan for where your content is going to live and how you’re going to get it in front of your target audience. A successful content marketing strategy depends on more than just optimizing your content for SEO. You also need to have a plan for where and how you will distribute your content so that it reaches your target audience.
Karine Bengualid, owner of Brought to you by the letter K, states that content promotion or distribution is the number one issue she sees with companies. They focus too much time and money on producing content, but do not properly distribute it or track any analytics. Without promotion, audiences will not be aware of the content available and it will go to waste.
Karine has a lot of experience writing for big brands, like Shopify. She’s seen firsthand which companies promote their content effectively and which ones don’t even bother trying.
The most successful companies are adept at promoting their content across social media platforms, repurposing it for other publications, and re-creating it using different mediums.
11. Team management and remote hiring
Team management for content marketers is critical and involves managing in-house writers, editors, and freelancers.
Many companies are hesitant to start content marketing, and only have one person on their content team.
Once the traffic starts to pick up, they start to scratch their heads, trying to figure out how to expand the operation.
There is no one definitive answer to whether it is better to hire an in-house content marketer or to outsource the work. It depends on the specific situation and what will work best for the company.
Many content strategists have also managed people at some point, which can include running regular check-ins and annual reviews.
A good content marketer needs to be able to manage both in-house employees and freelancers. Their ability to train a remote team is important.
12. Graphic design and video scripting
Content marketers should be skilled in both graphic and video design in order to be successful. A large majority of businesses use video as a marketing tool, so it is essential that marketers consider video to be a part of their content marketing strategy.
Wyzowl surveyed over 500 marketers in 2021 and found out the most common types of videos created:
Almost three-quarters of marketers said they create explainer videos, which are used to provide more information about the product or service being offered. Just over two-thirds said they make videos for social media.
Video content is more popular than ever before, leading to the rise of platforms like Vine, TikTok, and Snapchat which have millions of users worldwide.
A social media manager is usually responsible for creating platform-specific content, but it’s often the content marketer’s job.
As video becomes increasingly popular as a content marketing tool, companies are looking for marketers who are able to write video scripts and create video content.