Content marketing is far from a new strategy. In fact, it has been around for more than 250 years.
In 1732, Benjamin Franklin used an ingenious form of content marketing to promote his printing business.
He began publishing a yearly Almanack under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, named Poor Richards Almanack.
Almanacks were a very popular type of book in the colonial American times. They offered a mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, useful household hints, entertaining puzzles, and other amusements for the reader.
During the years of publication, the almanacs sold 10,000 copies per year. And each of those copies were of course printed by, and available from Benjamin Franklin’s printing shop.
Content Marketing Must Create Engagement
The idea of providing valuable, entertaining, desirable information for free (or a low cost) to attract attention to a business or brand is at the core of all content marketing. In a sense, you give away a sample of what’s inside the box so that people want more of it.
Even in 2021, this is the exact job that content marketing specialists are hired to do.
They find new and interesting ways to get attention for a business that grows the customer base. And they do it with a strategic content plan in mind that can be measured and built upon over time. Sometimes known as inbound marketing, this is the job of attracting new business by offering value first before asking for a sale.
In this article we will look at how a content marketing specialist can help your business, and what skills they can offer you.
What is a Content Marketing Specialist?
In order to connect with clients and customers, you must think in terms of what they are wanting and needing before they buy.
Many business owners are focused on gaining higher lead conversions or increasing brand awareness, but they miss the fact that most customers are immediately interested in what they offer.
A content marketing specialist (sometimes called a ‘digital marketing specialist’ or a ‘content strategist’) is trained to think like a customer, and to start to move them towards buying over time. They create entertaining, valuable, shareable content pieces that make people remember the business and want to buy from them.
A content marketing specialist can lead, design, and maintain your digital marketing campaigns and facilitate all aspects of content creation.
They take the guesswork out of attracting new business and offer a valuable unique service.
Very often, a content marketing specialist is the person responsible for writing, editing, and developing the content pieces your business needs of digital marketing campaigns.
Depending upon the size of the business, content marketing specialists may also lead a content team, that will include a SEO specialist, a graphic designer, a videographer, as well as someone who handles social media.
They may also liaise with the brand manager who oversees the look and feel of the marketing campaigns for products and services. They may also liaise with the sales team to track lead generation results.
Content marketing specialists will typically have extensive experience in marketing, SEO, PPC, or social media marketing. They may also hold a bachelor’s degree in marketing or a similar field such as journalism, public relations or business communications.
When searching for a content marketing specialist, it’s important to find someone whose role aligns with your wants and needs as a business.
Some businesses prefer to hire one person who has a variety of digital marketing skills and can handle most of the aspects of the content marketing in-house. Others will choose to outsource everything to a content marketing agency who designs a strategy and creates the content pieces on their behalf.
Because the role is fairly new, you might sometime hear it described by another name:
- Content Marketing Specialist
- Content Marketing Strategist
- Content Marketing Manager or Content Marketing Director
- Content Marketer and Content Marketing Expert
- Content Marketing Consultant
Whatever the specific title, the ideal content marketing specialist needs a combination of writing, storytelling and strategizing skills in order to create and manage marketing projects that resonate with a target audience.
What are the Responsibilities of a Content Marketing Specialist?
Every business has a unique offering, and it is the job of the content marketing team to find ways to attract new interested people to engage with your brand.
The main parts of the role of a content marketing specialist include:
- Collaborating with other creatives (graphic designer, videographer, PPC, SEO) to produce high quality content that gets attention and clicks
- Researching, writing and editing copy for websites, blog posts, emails, and social media
- Delivering strong, engaging content to clients on a weekly and month basis
- Revising and updating old content to enhance it’s SEO value
- Analyzing web metrics to see which content is getting the most traction
- Share content on social media and through email to engage with your customers and prospects
Remember the end goal of all content marketing is to drive targeted traffic to your business website and get people talking about your brand.
What Skills Does a Content Marketing Specialist Need?
To become a content marketing specialist, you ideally need a broad range of skills and knowledge. Here are the typical qualifications and skills a content marketing specialist needs.
1) Associate or Bachelor’s Degree – as a freelancer this may be optional, but it can be a requirement to work internally for a company. The typical standard is a Bachelor’s degree in marketing, journalism, or business communications.
2) Content Marketing Certifications – while not mandatory, some additional training can increase your chances of landing a content marketing specialist role, and keeping you up to date with the latest tools and trends.
3) Market Research – As content marketer, you’re constantly putting valuable information about your brand into the public eye. Brand marketing relies on understanding how your customers think, and leading them to trust your brand. Therefore, it’s critical that what you create is what people want and need. Research skills are a must in the digital marketing world, as they allow you to identify what your prospects and customers are interested in, and how you can stand out against your competitors.
4) Content Writing Skills – a large portion spent working on content marketing involves writing of some type. Content marketers and do the job of a copywriter and work on website copy, advertisement copy, blog posts, video scripts, and social media posts. For this reason, a strong understand of how to write is a must.
5) SEO and Keyword Research Skills – All website content is published with a goal to rank well in the SERPs (search engine results pages). To succeed as a content marketing specialist, you do need to know how to do basic keyword research, and competitor analysis. SEO and keyword research helps you better understand the content needs of online users and how you can match their search intent.
6) SEO Analytics Skills – To get the most from your content marketing campaigns, you must be able to measure the results. Know how to analyze marketing data and the effectiveness of a campaign helps you improve your results. To do this, you need an understanding of marketing analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Hotjar, etc. The good news is that most of these tools are free, or have free trials, so you can access them and get up to speed quite quickly.
Project Management – A content marketing specialist is constantly producing new content assets, evaluating marketing strategies, and maintaining content calendars for their business. Organizational and project management skills are necessary to ensure everything is planned, produced, and delivered on time. Using an editorial calendar is necessary as there are many launches, seasonal events, and special needs that require expert planning and attention to detail.
What To Look for in a Content Marketing Specialist
Many business owners will attempt to do their content marketing themselves, or hand it over to a member of their team as part of another role. While this is better than nothing, it is not ideal.
Content marketing strategy is a specialist skill that requires experience and a constant focus. Just like managing the finances, or selling to clients, your marketing team needs to have a clear focus if they are to succeed.
Ideally, if you are looking to hire a content marketing specialist, make sure you have a clear plan in mind for what you want them to achieve.
Do you want more brand recognition? More leads in your pipeline? Do you want to grow your social media presence? Maybe it’s all of the above. There are many ways you can benefit from having a content marketing team (either in-house or freelance), but you must be able to measure their success.
Also important is to gauge whether they are able to think creatively, and can understand your market. Every business will relate to their customers differently, so you have to find a person who can speak the language that your customers do.
If your industry is very niche, it might mean you have to spend some time training up the person your hire so that they understand how to best relate to your customers and prospects.
How to Hire a Content Marketing Specialist
If you are looking to build your content marketing team or hire a content marketing specialist, there are some key factors to look at.
Review Samples of Previous Marketing Work
Content samples are similar to references in a resume. They show what a potential content marketing specialist can do for your business. Take the time review any product marketing samples, marketing copy, or marketing content examples they can provide.
As highlighted earlier, writing skills are essential in the world of content marketing. It’s best if you hire someone who can formulate a story with a solid introduction, body and conclusion. Writing samples and examples of previous work can help you navigate which specialists deserve an interview.
You might also look at how their previous work has performed online. Have they been able to get their content to rank in the search engines? Have they had success in generating leads from their online ads or on a social media platform? What are their open rates for email campaigns? These kinds of results will show you how effective they can be as a digital marketer for your business as well.
Ask Them to Review Your Existing Content
Before interviewing a potential content marketing specialist, share some of your existing content projects from your brand. This will help them to get an idea of what you like to create. You might ask them for feedback on how they can improve, or what they would do differently.
It will also give you an idea of how their mind works, and what strategies they are likely to employ in your content marketing campaigns.
Give Them a Sample Project To Work On
Before taking on someone full time, it can be a good idea to offer them a paid single project to test their skills. See how they handle the research, production, and implementation. View how they track results for you and how they make tweaks to the campaign.
Seeing a content marketer in action is a great way to get a feel for how they think and work and whether they will be a good match for your team long term.
How Does a Content Marketing Specialist Help Your Business?
Looking to add content marketing to your business? Remember that it’s a journey that takes several years. Unlike paying for advertising to attract immediate business, you are building an asset of organic reach and customer trust. It takes patience, trial and error, and a lot of persistence to make content marketing work for your business. But the rewards are out of all proportion to the time invested.
The reason so few companies invest in a content marketing team is because they have a short-term focus. But the very best businesses invest in their brand, and grow their reputation over time.
Content marketing works in exactly the same way. When you hire a content team or a content specialist, you are investing for the long-term, and giving more value to your prospects and customers than your competitors do.
[…] the more they will trust you and share with others. Investing time in your content marketing or hiring a content marketing specialist is a great way to stand out from the […]