The case for hiring a content manager on your marketing team is easy to make. However, the importance for this role is often overlooked by management.
For some reason, many company’s think that they can create an inbound marketing strategy and implement this strategy with their existing teams rather than hiring a content manager. Often times, marketing specialists, social media marketers, or other team members are tasked with becoming the honorary content manager.
If this sounds like you, it's OK. We are going to get you headed down the right path! If you are considering hiring a content manager, but need help justifying hiring your content manager to company leadership, just keep reading.
Before we get any further, you shouldn’t expect your marketing team to suddenly turn into expert content creators, editors, or managers. These folks, who are great team members, need to focus on their current job responsibilities – not adding new ones.
You need to hire a content manager if you want to keep your content strategy train on the tracks. Without a content manager, goals of growing your business, sending leads to pipeline, and increasing brand authority will not be accomplished.
The case for hiring a content manager is outlined below. Let’s start!
OH! THE PAIN OF NOT HAVING A CONTENT MANAGER
Creating content isn’t an easy task. It’s a struggle to stay motivated for marketing managers that are looking for fresh content and ideas. We are tasked with getting leads into the sales funnel.
If you’ve been in the content marketing game for any amount of time you are probably feeling the burden. “We need more content! Where is the content!” This is uttered in every SCRUM call, every huddle, and what was once a fun hobby is now a burden.
Guess what… it’s OK that you feel this way. I mean, there are only so many hours in the day and so much work to be done that content often takes a back seat.
On that note, let’s touch on some pain points when there isn’t a content manager in place:
you will always have people on your team who would rather be doing other things.
For example, a client of mine just had a young marketer, super wiz kid, leave the organization because they wanted to get campaigns to market instead of spending one full day (or more) each week working on content. The process gets tedious for employees who would rather be working on new campaigns than re-editing a 1,000-word blog posts created earlier in the week.
Unmotivated Content
You can tell when someone turns in an unmoved piece of content. There is a clear lack of spirit in content when the writer doesn’t feel like they are giving information that matters to the reader. This results in dull content that isn’t engaging and takes up space. The last thing you want a website visitor to think is that you have wasted their time!
Content managers work with employees to understand their likes, dislikes, and what areas they really enjoy writing about. In a sense, your content manager empowers the employee to provide excellent content to your visitors, resulting in a stable of content that is energized and exciting to read.
A failed or postponed inbound strategy
If your marketing team is not unified on the inbound strategy and understanding of the importance of the content created, then you will most like postpone inbound efforts to keep everyone happy. 3 out of 4 of my clients had previously stopped inbound efforts before hiring Albany Digital. Why? Because creating content became a nuisance. The team never turned in content on time. The department wasn’t reaching production goals. The list could go on!
Luckily, for Albany Digital clients, we bring the importance of inbound strategy to the forefront and enlist one of our own content managers to your team that empowers employees to produce quality content. Don’t worry, once you hire a content manager we’ll train them to do the same thing!
TURNING MARKETERS IN CONTENT MANAGERS WON’T WORK!
This holds true in any situation and is one of the biggest leadership mistakes that can be made in implementing an inbound strategy. A very special personality type is required for a content manager, and your top marketers should not be tasked to take on a content manager role. If you do this, you will lose a great employee due to frustration. Whether that frustration is in working with other employees on content and deadlines or because they can no longer focus on their ACTUAL job description – you will be risking losing a great employee.
Asking your digital marketers, social media, or event marketers to become content editors and storytellers over night is a recipe for disaster. You need someone who is ready, willing, and qualified to take on the content manager role.
HIRE A CONTENT MANAGER FOR YOUR MARKETING TEAM
Content mangers are there to manager the writers, edit content to make it more impactful, excite and unify your team on overall strategy, and help publish the right content for your business.
Not only that, but content managers communicate directly with leadership and stakeholders to manage expectations.
There are so many articles and courses that tell you how to tell your brand’s story, but your content manager is a natural! Not that the courses won’t benefit them, but they should be a born storyteller. Other members of your team do great jobs at specializing in their platforms, hitting email engagement goals, creating compelling designs, BUT your content manager helps tell your story!
Plus, hiring a content manager helps bring content from subject matter experts together to better the user experience and the experience of the employee. The processes put in place by content managers make it simple for members of your organization to write about what they love and share it with your readers.
In the past, clients who have invested in a content manager have seen increases in traffic of over 500% and leads to pipeline increase by nearly the same rate over the course of a year.
WHAT NOW? (YOUR NEXT STEPS)
Want to see major growth in web traffic, lead conversion, and dollars to pipeline? Yeah, you do. But where do you go from there?
First, read this article on the “top qualities of a great content manager”. Understand these qualities and start looking for someone who can fill that role in your local area. Keep in mind that you’ll need to be a bit picky on your new hire, which could cost you time and money.
In the meantime, there agencies that can help fill the role, and potentially at a lower cost. you can talk with someone at Albany Digital about helping with content management in the meantime.
Second, never fear. The right person for the job is out there, and if you hire someone who has the skills you are looking for then you’ll quickly start earning more web traffic and more business from customer.
You’ll wonder why you ever second guessed hiring a content manager in the first place!
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