Recruiting the Right Content Manager for Your Company

Rising to the challenge
I would say this is one of the most challenging recruitment jobs in marketing. Content management is often still added to a marketing manager’s responsibilities, and its true there can be a cross over especially for smaller companies, however there is a clear trend across all industries that content management is becoming a specialised role in its own right.

It’s not just about writing
When looking to fill the content management role, one thing for sure is that you should not be looking for a journalist or blog writer that covers your industry, even if they are well respected. To start with, content is not just about writing.  That would be too easy!

A broad set of skills is key
For content marketing to be effective for your company, the manager needs to get a lot more things right than just writing. They need to assume the role of the Subject Matter Expert for the product or service you are offering and be able to produce relevant content on topics that will attract your target customers, drive the right traffic to the content and then convert that traffic into new customers or retain existing ones.

On top of all that, you need someone who can commission original blog and video content to attract organic search traffic, so agency management expertise is critical.  But there is much more.

1) They also will need to manage a content management system, such as WordPress.

2) Work with multiple forms of social media,

3) Manage mailing lists, customer databases, and CRM software.

4) They will need to know how to optimize content for SEO through keyword focus, hashtags, images, etc.

5) Tailor content to different channels and different types of users.

6) Find new audiences and provide content that is useful to them.

7) And then you have the whole analysis side – key metrics, targets, web traffic and then be able to react quickly when a particular strategy isn’t working.

The right kind of experience is essential.

The kind of experience you are looking for is either experience in a content management for a similar company or at least a couple of years ‘experience managing a blog, editorial team, or website.   A job title could be Chief Content Officer for a large corporation with extensive internal resources, but most companies will need to outsource most creative activities because of the variety of content, countries and languages to be covered,  so titles would normally be Content Director or Manager or if the role will be a hybrid one then it could be simply Content and Marketing Manager. It will really depend on the size of the team and the scope of role.