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We all know that the success of any website depends on quality content. Indeed “Content is King”, but who really is the engine behind every smart content planning? A Content Manager of course!
Content managers create, distribute, strategizes, and promote content. In fact, they play the leading role in overall content marketing.
Maybe you’ve been dreaming of becoming a content manager and you really don’t know how to get started. In this article, we have highlighted the various roles and responsibilities of a content manager including the salary and qualifications. Read through to gain the most.
Who is a Content Manager?
A content manager oversees the development, distribution, and strategic efforts of creating messaging to inform and delight audiences. This role usually involves knowledge of software, tools, and methods to help execute their job functions, people and project management, and an understanding of brand voice.
Content Manager job title
A great job title typically includes a general term, level of experience and any special requirements. The general term will optimize your job title to show up in a general search for jobs of the same nature.
The level of experience will help you attract the most qualified applicants by outlining the amount of responsibility and prior knowledge required.
And if your position is specialized, consider including the specialization in the job title as well. But avoid using internal titles, abbreviations, or acronyms to make sure people understand what your job posting is before clicking.
Below are examples of Content Manager job titles
- Head of Content
- Content Marketing Executive
- Digital Content Manager
- Senior Content Strategist
- Content Marketing Manager (Strategic Partnerships)
#1. Plan Editorial Calendar
To be a truly effective content manager, you must plan content. The editorial calendar makes content planning easy.
This tool helps schedules all content activities like the kind of content the company will produce, the blog article topics, days content will be published, post social media notifications, and emails. The editorial calendar helps the content manager to manage the distribution of content across all channels.
For smaller organizations, the content manager may be responsible for writing, editing, and publishing all of the content.
For larger organizations along with a marketing team, the content manager acts as the central figure in charge of organizing all the content and keeping others adherent to deadlines.
#2. They Work closely with Sales and Leadership
One of the most important role of a content manager is the relationship with sales, leadership, and any customer-facing employee.
The content manager is only successful if they’re able to bridge the gap between the marketing department and other departments in the organization. This is especially true of having a close working relationship with the sales team.
3. Write & Edit Blog Articles
Writing and editing of content is another important content manager job description. In fact, it is the strongest skill set a content manager should have. Even if you have multiple writers for your website, the content manager often produces a lot of the blog content themselves.
Content managers spend a large chunk of their time researching, writing, and editing high-quality blog articles that address the most important questions your prospects are asking.
4. Create Premium Content
It is the content’s manager job description to create premium content. In addition to writing blog articles aimed at attracting new visitors to a website, a content manager creates premium content to help convert those visitors into leads.
Premium contents are simply downloadable pieces of content such as checklists, tip-sheets, and infographics, or longer, more detailed offerings like ebooks and whitepapers.
Getting a new visitor to come to your website in search of an answer to a specific question is great, but getting them to share information about themselves in exchange for a premium offer will help you get more leads into your funnel.
5. Promote Content
It can take a lot of time for newly published content to start bringing in organic traffic. In fact, it can take several months to a year to get to the first page for your targeted keywords.
To help get eyes on the content earlier, Content managers promote the content through various mediums as well. They decide which social media channels to promote content on.
A content manager should have an active Facebook community, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, or LinkedIn contacts, to promote content on those channels.
It’s never a best practice to use the same messaging across all the platforms, so a content manager will want to tailor posts with platform-specific language.
Content managers should also promote content through email as well. They send emails to the people who are already subscribed to your notifications whenever there is a new blog article. They can promote one piece at a time or do a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly email roundup of the most important pieces of content they’ve created since the last notification.
A content manager should become an active member across various forums that have solid followings. Reddit can be a great place to find questions people have that you have answers to, but make sure the answer is more than just a link to the article and that your response to the query gives a more comprehensive answer.
6. Repurpose Content
A great content manager identifies top-performing pieces of content and repackages them into other formats.
A blog article could be a great subject for a video, podcast, or infographic. A series of blog articles can be turned into an ebook.
Even a sentence or paragraph in an article can be turned into a tweet or meme.
A content manager should always be looking for ways to reach new audiences by catering to their varied learning preferences.
Some people prefer reading long content. Others short. Many want to watch content on YouTube. Others want to listen while driving or doing chores.
A content manager should know the audience’s preferences to help reach more people in the ways they appreciate.
7. Refreshing Existing Content
One mistake businesses often make with their content marketing is they solely focus on creating new content.
I’m sure if you look closely, there’s a ton of articles a year or older that now have outdated information.
Rather than create a brand new article on that topic, a content manager should regularly review existing content and update it with the latest information and SEO best practices.
8. Obsess Over Metrics
A content manager should know how efficiently content marketing efforts are working. They should be obsessed with tracking and measuring the performance of all of the content they’ve created, from a high-level view down to the granular.
Using tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Google Search Console, Google My Business, and SEMrush is essential for proper analysis and insight.
I’ll just quickly run down some important metrics:
- Traffic
- Traffic sources
- Returning visitors
- Traffic demographics
- Device types
- Keyword growth
- First page rankings
- SERP Features
- Page views
- Time on page
- Bounce rates
- Social shares
- Backlinks
- Form submission rates
- Email clicks
- Contact list growth
- Email sends
- Email opens
- MQLs
- SQLs
- Customers
- Revenue
There are a ton of metrics to review, and a content manager should be familiar with and engrossed by all of them.
Content manager Qualifications and Skills
Content managers possess some required and preferred skills. This may include education, previous job experience, certifications, technical skills, and personality traits.
These skills may include:
- Proven work experience as a Content manager
- Hands-on experience with MS Office and WordPress
- Basic technical knowledge of HTML and web publishing
- Knowledge of SEO and web traffic metrics
- Familiarity with social media
- Excellent writing skills in English
- Bachelor’s Degree preferred
- Understanding of content marketing tactics, such as SEO, digital advertising, and social media marketing
- Demonstrated ability to lead content marketing campaigns
- Strong Google Analytics, WordPress, and Adobe Acrobat/Illustrator skills
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- 2+ years of experience in Content Marketing
- Attention to detail
- Good organizational and time-management skills
- BSc degree in Journalism, Marketing or relevant field
Conclusion
A content manager is an embodiment of content marketing. They’re the person responsible for and obsessed with ensuring a business succeeds in the digital world.
Are gunning to become a content manager or maybe you’re just a content writer seeking for job? Check out our article on how to Land Premium Writing Gigs even as a novice.
