According to MarketingProfs, only 35% B2C marketers say their content marketing strategy is “extremely” or “very” effective. Brands that choose to invest in content strategists have an advantage: someone to lead the process. In this blog, you’ll learn what skills you need to be a great content strategist.
The following skillsets are beneficial for content strategists to use on a daily basis. Which ones do you have? And which ones are you missing?
1. Solid Copywriting Skills
If you can’t write great content, it doesn’t matter how well you plan it or distribute it. The writing process is the most important part of content marketing. Know who creates your content (whether internal or external) and how well they understand your business.
You need to have solid copywriting skills to know how to direct, plan, design and edit this content. Even if you’re not writing on a daily basis yourself, you’ll have to jump in and write something at some point, and you need to know what does and doesn’t get results.
The ability to see the big picture and build a storyline across a website or campaign is also key for a content strategist. For websites, reaching this goal often starts with laying out the existing content architecture to identify where content is located and how it functions. For campaigns, research the mindset of your users and perform testing. Consider how this feedback can be used to refine messaging.
2. Content Presentation Skills
Once your content is written and approved, you must determine how it will be packaged for prospects and customers to consume. Each type of content (social, video, eBooks, guides, etc.) has a specific purpose for your audience, and it’s up to you to decide what that is based on analytics, research and experience.
You should have content that’s both long-form and short-form, with interesting headlines and stand-out images, no matter the format.
3. Content Delivery Skills
Once your content is ready for production, you need the skills get it in front of your audience. You should work with other digital marketing experts on your marketing team to determine the best distribution channels. A simple blog post can get great traction if you research the topic and discover the ideal way for it to reach your audience.
4. Campaign Experience
It’s difficult to strategize a campaign if you don’t have several years of executing them. Content strategists need experience planning, delivering and executing marketing campaigns, as well as analyzing metrics and developing creative strategy to earn a position.
5. Content Monetization Skills
Unless you work at a media company, content probably isn’t the way you directly earn revenue. Instead, its goal is to get people to buy your product/service. As a content strategist, you must plan how your content can be monetized and communicate this to your executive team.
6. Multitasking and Organizational Skills
Life as a content strategist can be a lonely experience. Often, the brand’s content marketing success primarily depends on your efforts, and your company’s leaders will expect you to have an independent, take-charge attitude to get the job done.
And while there’s certainly room for collaboration with other marketing team members, you’ll be the sole owner of your specific initiatives. In doing so, you’ll have to manage many types of projects and people on a daily basis.
Project management tools, calendars and note-taking will all be important to you. Tracking projects and organizing communication with stakeholders and other departments iskey to managing budgets, vendor contracts and editorial calendars–not to mention any improvements to the content strategy or lifecycle that must be rolled out across the entire organization. There will be many times you’ll need buy-in from the higher-ups, so be confident and ready to share your ideas.
A typical day for a content strategist includes meetings various teams across the organization to discuss ongoing and upcoming projects, outlining future content and working with a designer to visual elements.
Content strategists typically work closely with social media strategists, designers, UX specialists, marketing leadership and lead generation teams to craft a cohesive message. Individuals lacking great communication and planning skills need not apply.
7. A (Metaphorical) Editor’s Pen
We’ve already stated that content strategists need editing skills, but it goes beyond simply cutting words or optimizing phrases. Editorial competency is especially important during migration projects. Large brands almost never track all the content they’re publishing. It’s the content strategist’s job to content a thorough content audit to determine what should be kept, edited, rewritten or retired based on analytics, the age of the content and current and historical performance.
8. An Analytical Mind
Apps and integrations make collecting data easy for most marketers today. But knowing what to do with that data is another story. As a content strategist, you’ll need to spot patterns and trends in your content marketing data and draw conclusions.
Perhaps your blog posts perform better Facebook, while your videos work well on Instagram. Maybe your brand’s most shareable content is 1,500 words long, published in the morning, and including two Pinterest-sized images.
9. Consensus-Building Skills
As a content strategist, you will be the spokesperson of your brand’s content. Not everyone will be on board with your job or its functions. Some won’t even be on board with the importance of content marketing. You need to spread the gospel of content marketing across your organization by outlining and demonstrating its many benefits.
