Hubspot, Buffer and BuzSumo. What’s the common thread in these million-dollar brands?
All of them have used content marketing as their growth engine.
Content marketing managers have proved their worth in the business. That’s why content marketing managers are in demand, but companies are looking for professionals with specific talents.
If you are a content marketing manager or interested in becoming one, it’s important to have a strong set of skills to achieve your brand’s objectives.
But what skills do you need? Let’s explore below.
The Responsibilities of Content Marketing Managers
Brands use content to communicate and attract a target audience. Content can include anything from blog posts to images to videos. Content marketing managers guide all the content efforts including planning, production and distribution.
Semrush’s content marketing survey shows that 42% of companies have one to three content marketing specialists, while 21% lack a content marketing person or team. However, more companies are planning to hire a content marketing manager for their teams.
The Skills of Content Marketing Managers
Content marketing management is multidisciplinary, requiring skills like writing, management, reporting, and sales. There is no one list with all the skills that expert content marketers need.
Plus, content managers come from all types of professions—higher education, law, and even the culinary arts. Here are some common skills that we see in many expert content marketing managers.
1. Writing & Editing
Every content marketer should know the basics of content writing. You might not primarily write blog posts, but you will be editing and proofreading the content. A good editor has a sense of content style and tone. They can differentiate between filler and quality content.
Content managers ensure every content piece attracts the target audience. It should have engaging and helpful information that entices the readers to take the next step.
Besides content publication, content marketers write emails, create community guidelines, and develop social media captions. All these tasks involve clear and concise writing.
2. Content Strategy
Content marketing managers research their customers’ pain points and explore industry data to build a comprehensive content marketing strategy.
Content strategy includes the process of using and creating the content to accomplish the business objectives. The process includes finding the relevant content topics and creating high-quality content. Published content is promoted using multiple marketing channels. After building the content system, content managers scale the production accordingly.
For example, let’s say you want to generate brand awareness using the content. You would need to know who your reader is, what problem your content is solving, how the product is incorporated into the content, and where to publish the content. Content marketers go in depth to create a solid content strategy to ensure the right content connects with the right person.
3. Project Management
Many people are involved in the content marketing process – content writers, designers, and digital marketers, SEOs, and copywriters. And they all need to move in one direction.
Managing blog content, promotions for upcoming events, and aligning the graphic team with writers are all different projects. Content managers ensure all these tasks are done on time.
Typically, the content marketing manager will use project management tools, like Cliq and Workona, to track the content progress and resources. Keeping tabs on everything could be confusing and time consuming, but a skilled manager uses technology to build scalable content systems.
4. Communication
Content marketers communicate within cross-functional teams. This communication includes converting complex marketing tasks into simple language, assigning tasks to team members, and giving constructive criticism.
Be it internal, or external, communication plays a critical role in content marketing. The content marketer leads everything, like a conductor in an orchestra, guiding the musicians to create music instead of noise.
5. Sales
Selling the product is the ultimate goal of content marketing.
Not all the content is created for the same purpose. Some content is published to generate awareness (top of the funnel), while other content solves the user’s immediate problems (e.g. software errors). Finally, there is content to build trust and to create leads.
Kate Wojewada, content manager at Spacelift, says that a content marketer plans content for each stage of the funnel–moving the reader from one article to another–taking them towards conversion.
Without some basic knowledge of sales, and consumer psychology, the content marketer could be successful in bringing traffic but would fail in creating customers.
6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Effective content marketers optimize content for the search engine, so it ranks higher and brings organic visits to the website. SEO is the process to optimize the webpage’s content to attract quality traffic from search engine results.
According to Backlinko research, the #1 result In Google gets 27.6% of all clicks, which is nearly 2 times the #2 result. Expert content marketers are well aware of this fact and aim for the first position. They use SEO strategies to rank the content.
Content marketing and SEO skills are different aspects of marketing. However, an experienced content marketing manager designs the content strategies with SEO in mind. For example, Google loves websites that update the content regularly. So, the content manager creates a content calendar to accomplish this task.
7. Social Media
Social media marketing does not directly come under content marketing tasks, but social media is a major part of content promotion strategy. Doing content repurposing for different platforms is an important aspect of content marketing.
A blog post could be turned into a Twitter thread, a Quora answer, a Linkedin post, a quick TikTok video, and Instagram posts. But each social media demands a different content format, style, and visual aesthetics.
A savvy content marketing manager understands how to adjust content to meet the needs of the audience on each social media platform. They research the content format and test similar content.
8. Data Analysis & Research
Doing marketing inherently means looking at research and data to make decisions.
First, you need to know whether blog articles are the correct format to promote the business. So, you have to do market and competitor research. Then you research the topics for your business or conduct keyword research.
After the content is published, you analyze the data to see the content result. The sales and traffic metrics reveal if your strategies meet your goals or if you need to improve them. Similarly, you can use the data to plan content for social media content, email marketing, and paid ads.
Deniz Kuran, content manager of Idiomatic, found that improving data analytics skills improves content decisions. An effective content marketing manager converts the data into actionable steps.
9. Tech-Friendly
Content marketing involves so much that doing it all manually would slow down the growth. And internet marketing is anything but slow. Once you grasp the content marketing basics, the marketing tools help speed up execution.
Keyword research tools like Ahrefs can push out thousands of keywords related to your product in a few clicks. Modern platforms like Slack and Discord bring a flexible and collaborative approach to team communication.
The top three technologies B2C content marketers use are analytics tools (85%), social media publishing/analytics (73%), and email marketing software (71%). Tech savvy content marketers are in high demand.
Level Up Your Content Marketing Skills
These skills are essential to becoming an expert content marketer. The practice of content marketing is an ongoing learning process. So, keep researching the latest strategies and learning by doing.
About the Author
Faizan Fahim is a full time content manager and likes writing about B2B SaaS, content marketing, marketing technologies, emails, and cloud computing. Faizan’s words have been featured in Semrush, Wordstream, Clutch, Goodfirms and more. You can connect with him on Twitter @faizandaa.
