You learn the 2025 budget has room to add a new role to your content and marketing team, and you get to decide what that will be.
Would you add another writer? What about a data wrangler? Or would you opt for a strategist? What about a customer-focused role?
To help in your analysis, we posed the scenario to the experts presenting at Content Marketing World 2024. They certainly don’t agree on the type of role to add, and a few had a challenge with just one role to add (that’s why you’ll see a couple of people share more than one idea).
They tackled content creation, data analysis, operations, and more.
Analyzers of what’s happening
Zack Kadish, senior ranking-update-coming-soon-but-hcu-victims-should-move-on">SEO strategy director at Conductor, says many teams are not sufficiently monitoring their performance and understand how content is doing. “This should be an important step so the teams can analyze if they need to change the content or work different things into the process, so more people find what they are writing,” he says.
Among the possible analysis roles to consider:
Data analyst
Most content marketing teams lack a true data analyst. Someone who is looking deep into the numbers behind what is performing and what isn’t, what your audience is looking for more of, and what your team is wasting valuable time on. A dedicated data analyst can transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategy, improve results, and help bridge the gap between creative content production and strategic business outcomes. — Ashley Baker, founder and chief marketing officer, Coastline Marketing LLC
Analytics specialist
The role I see most often missing is an analytics specialist. Measurement also happens to be the step most often missing from content marketing campaigns. Understanding how your content performs will help you improve the next round of content. It will help you understand what worked well and what didn’t work well.
An analytics associate can also help during campaign planning by evaluating customer and competitor data to help inform your strategy. Unfortunately, this role is often lacking on content teams. They either feel it is not warranted or have other team members who are less skilled in measurement and analytics take on this responsibility. — Andi Robinson, content strategist, Hijinx Marketing
Metator
“Metator” (a meta-related position) to track relationships among source and derivative / reused content across channels, including personalized variants (some generated by AI). This requires a lot of system tweaking, librarianship, and cleanup — or your platforms will become a complete mess, gumming up your personalization plans! — Tony Byrne, founder, Real Story Group
Data miner
Data mining outside of SEO data. Nothing makes me cringe more than when content teams use just SEO ranking data to create their strategy. The guys at Google have been saying the same thing since their existence: Write content that is meaningful, helpful, and relevant to your business. That may very well mean content that isn’t ranked and isn’t searched, but it can be a customer journey push. — Michael Bonfils, global managing director, Digital International Group
Competitive analyzer
An extremely valuable role in content marketing is competitive analysis. When you have accurate insight into your competitor’s content strategy, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, you can more effectively inform your content strategy. — Bernie Borges, vice president, global content marketing, iQor
Strategists
Keeping the big picture for your organization in mind can be challenging if your team is focused on producing and publishing content every day. But a 30,000-foot view is a must for sustainable success. These roles can help fulfill the vision:
Business translator
Most content teams lack someone who can translate clear business objectives into communication objectives. Additionally, more and more companies need to measure the value of their content efforts. Only in this way can you connect your goals to your results. —Pauline Lannoo, head of digital strategy, The Fat Lady
Chief content strategist
Unlike the traditional content strategist role often found in the marketing department, the chief content strategist oversees the entire organization’s content strategy. They ensure all content efforts align with overall business goals and audience needs, setting a master content strategy that guides all other content strategies. This ensures content creation is strategically aligned with company objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). — Cathy McKnight, chief problem solver, TCA
Content strategist
It’s difficult to narrow it down to one role because every team needs a content strategist as well as someone to wrangle the data and focus on SEO. Most of the content teams I work with have a gap on the content strategy side or the data/SEO side. — Brian Piper, director of content strategy and assessment, University of Rochester
Bottom-line-related goals
As the strategist must never lose sight of the goals for content and marketing, these roles must never lose sight of connecting those goals to the overall business objectives:
Revenue-generator promoter
Add a growth marketing role — less on the digital marketing or paid ads and more specifically on how to quantify creative and content from revenue and potential revenue perspective.
Most content teams still separate themselves greatly from revenue-generating components and lean only on the awareness/nurturing side. In the modern era, when the content team can be connected all the way through, it makes it significantly easier to get approvals and tie value back to the sustainability and growth of the business itself. —Troy Sandidge, founder, Strategy Hackers
Business wrangler
Someone needs to have a high-level view of how the content aligns with the business goals and strategy and be aware of what other initiatives are going on throughout the business. And someone needs to take a very granular look at the current content performance and the market landscape to discover opportunities to optimize existing content for better performance and to identify market gaps or trending topics for new content. — Brian Piper, director of content strategy and assessment, University of Rochester
Operations
With so many responsibilities, operating a content and marketing program is difficult. These roles can help manage all that’s happening without taking time away from the frontline creators and back-of-the-house strategists.
Project manager
Always have a project manager on your content team. Even with a content management system or a product management system, it’s important to have someone who understands the process it takes to research, craft, and publish quality content.
Since content is a group sport at most companies, the project manager works to align all the key stakeholders across everyone’s timeline. If your creators spend time cat herding, they lose time creating high-value assets. And if your strategy team is also your project management team, they lose valuable time measuring the impact the content has on your business. — Amy Higgins, director, content strategy, Cloudflare
Content operations
Most content teams lack a content operations person. This person might be the marketing operations person, but they need to understand both the technology required for effective marketing and the algorithm nuances to utilizing content. From SEO to social platforms to creative software, these people would provide an immense impact, especially at a time when AI and automation are quickly accelerating operations. — A. Lee Judge, co-founder and CMO, Content Monsta
Content traffic manager
Typically, parts of the content traffic manager role are spread across multiple people and teams but centralizing it can bring major benefits. A content traffic manager coordinates and manages the workflow and distribution of content across all channels. They ensure content aligns with business goals, is audience-centric, and is published at the right time through the best channels.
They also facilitate cross-functional collaboration and maintain quality, relevance, and accuracy through regular audits. Their deep understanding of past, current, and planned content increases content ROI by reducing/eliminating duplication of effort, increasing reuse of existing content components and assets, and reducing internally generated content/campaign competition. — Cathy McKnight, chief problem solver, TCA
Content maintainer
If your team doesn’t include someone whose job it is to actively maintain your content by reviewing, updating, optimizing, or even retiring it when no longer useful, then your content will slowly but surely degrade and stop delivering the results you need and expect. — Carmen Hill, principal strategist and writer, Chill Content LLC
Content creation roles
You may think you can never have too many people creating the content itself. So, if that’s the type of role you want to add, just make sure you make their duties focused and strategic. Among the options to consider:
Content updater
Google’s API documentation leak proved that their algorithm takes content freshness into consideration when making ranking decisions. For most brands, updating existing content is a bigger opportunity than creating new content. But keeping content fresh requires a completely different skillset than planning and writing new content.
To fill this role, don’t hire a writer. Hire a content updater who is adept at data analysis, competitor research, visual design, hunting down broken links, and comparing competing pages in an SEO tool. — Dale Bertrand, president, Fire&Spark
Editor
Most content teams would benefit from having an in-house editor who has the sole role of reviewing content for grammar, punctuation, and house style, as well as offering general content development feedback. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, and it’s really helpful to have an outside set of eyes to look at your content and help you improve. — Melanie Deziel, co-founder, CreatorKitchen.com
Well-versed writers
Dedicated writers who are well-versed on the tone and voice of an organization. — Royna Sharifi, senior marketing campaign manager, Amazon Web Services
Objective creators
One of the biggest hurdles I see challenging content teams can’t be fixed with a single person in a single role. In the agency world, a content contributor who cannot separate their personal worth and identity from a piece of content will find themselves on a constant emotional roller coaster. This roller coaster can throw the whole team off balance, slow content production, lead to team members working around one another, prevent the giving and receiving of radically candid (but kind) feedback, and ultimately limit the content creator’s career. As Steven Pressfield says, “The professional self-validates. If you’re reading this blog, YOU are a professional.” — Haley Collins, director of operations, GPO
Executor
This is a difficult one to answer as I am my marketing team’s sole content marketer. It would be helpful to have a second person who can help execute ideas and make sure all bases are covered. Sole content marketers have to wear a lot of hats, and they can get pretty heavy after a while. — Beth Elderkin, content marketing manager, Informa Connect
Content-adjacent roles
Content and marketing teams are structured differently in many organizations. Some of these suggested roles may operate in another department, so think about how to work with them as if they were on your content and marketing team. Others bring a fresh perspective and focus. Among the content-adjacent roles to consider:
Public relations pro
Having a PR person work with your content team can really help with not only writing and storytelling but also devising and implementing a strategy to help more people see your content. Many PR pros bring a journalism/writing background to their roles, coupled with knowledge of how to pitch and place news, stories, and content.
The content and PR teams should collaborate (along with the social media team) to maximize their efforts. — Michelle Garrett, consultant and writer, Garrett Public Relations
Designer
Most content teams I’ve been part of or worked with lack a dedicated design resource. While tools like Canva can be incredibly powerful for creating brand images, teams often need a professional designer for their most important content investments.
Without a designer, most content marketers scramble to create videos and images and all sorts of other design content to use across their channels. This forces teams to DIY it or cut corners when it comes to creating full content experiences and delivering the best value to their community through content. — Erika Heald, founder and chief content officer, Erika Heald Marketing Consulting
Audience advocate
You wouldn’t dedicate a person’s full-time role to audience advocacy, so spread it across all content team members. The more we advocate for our audience and deeply understand their challenges, needs, and perspectives, the more impact our content will create. — Dennis Shiao, founder, Attention Retention
Customer guru
Content teams should closely coordinate with their demand gen and customer marketing counterparts. To drive engagement and conversion, content marketers must know everything there is to know about their audiences — their behaviors, their activities, and their interests. Aligning with the teams who have direct line of sight into these insights ensures the content being created is the right kind of content, guiding buyers through their buying journey rather than adding more noise. — Josh Baez, senior manager, demand generation, NetLine
Specialists
In my experience, the greatest gap is having specialists with deep expertise on content teams. There’s a false perception that anyone can write, anyone can research, etc., and anyone can grab an image for art, but for standout results, you need experts. — Jenn VandeZande, editor-in-chief, SAP CX + Industries
Now hiring
With all those potential roles, what would you pick? And if you do get the budget to add a team member, take time to consider the options. Look at your content and marketing goals along with your content and marketing team org chart. If you see gaps where no one is responsible for tackling a critical step to achieving a goal, that may just be the role you add.
MORE ADVICE FROM CMWORLD SPEAKERS:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute