One might ask, “What is the actual need for having a content marketing strategist in your business?” We all know that the goal and objective of every business is to have content that targets their specific audience. So what if there was an opportunity to make that course close to perfection? With a good content marketing strategist, you might just get it right.
A content marketing strategist is the person in the middle who understands the company’s aim, whether that means reaching a new target audience, promoting a specific message, shifting perceptions of the brand, or anything in between, and performs the necessary content planning to create an actionable strategy.
Because this is what I do, in this guide, I will carefully hold your hands and walk you through what I know about a content marketing strategist, how to become one, and what they can do to boost your business.
What Is a Content Marketing Strategist?
First of all, what is a content strategy? Content strategy is the process of developing and managing different forms of content to achieve specific business goals, such as increased sales, a higher engagement rate, better customer loyalty, and improved brand recognition. A content marketing strategist is the person in charge of the content strategy, but they won’t implement the strategy; rather, they will tell the company how to do it.
A content marketing strategist is responsible for planning, producing, and executing a business content strategy to help achieve their content marketing goals. They also report on the effectiveness of the content strategy to identify opportunities and areas for improvement.
A content marketing strategist must also keep records of current trends and best practices to ensure all content is optimised for SEO. Their main goal is to maximise their content reach and impact while staying within budget. Another thing is that they are not the same as content creators; a content creator carries on after the strategy has been made.
Key Points
- Content marketing strategists drive business goals through strategic planning, execution, and budget-conscious reporting.
- Becoming a content marketing strategist requires mastering SEO, understanding digital channels, gaining practical experience, learning tools, building a portfolio, networking, and tailoring job applications.
- Content marketing strategists profile businesses, identify audiences, conduct market research, create and optimise content, ensure quality, and stay updated on trends for effective execution.
How to Become a Content Marketing Strategist
There are different parts of becoming a content marketing strategist but in this section, I’m going to brief you on the steps that worked for me. They include:
#1. Master SEO
You can’t succeed as a content marketing strategist without being a master of SEO. You need to have an SEO background since their content strategy is mostly seen in SEO insights. One thing about mastering SEO is that it is a continuous process that requires effort and adaptation to new SEO algorithms. There are many techniques to use under SEO, including schema markup, optimising meta tags, canonicalization, robot.txt, etc. The easiest for me is optimising meta tags because it requires minimal effort and technical expertise and can be done quickly.
There are also many online resources and courses available to help learn all about SEO, the principle behind it and best practices that web content must adhere to. You can see them on YouTube, Udemy, Coursera, Surfer’s Academy, and so many other places.
#2. Know Digital Marketing Channels
Having a deep knowledge of digital marketing channels can help a content strategist in their day-to-day work. These digital channels include SEO, pay-per-click (PPC), social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, podcast and influencer marketing, etc. Knowing the various digital marketing channels can help you as a content marketing strategist in various ways, including content distribution, targeted audience, performance tracking, measuring and optimisation, content format and type, and budget allocation.
It will help you determine which channel suits the brand best to raise brand awareness and reach new and existing customers. You can consider signing up for online classes to further your knowledge. In most cases, people normally go for SEO, but when I work, I recommend using both SEO, pay-per-click and email marketing. Combining more than one will help you reach a larger audience in a short period of time.
#3. Get Work Experience
You cant perfect anything without experience. You need to gain experience in the field of content strategy. Also, you can do this by taking on internships or part-time work related to content creation or digital marketing. Take that internship seriously, whether it is a paid or unpaid internship. The goal here is to gain experience and gather knowledge on the concept of content strategy. You can start from writing blog posts for small businesses to helping with SEO optimisation of a website to managing social media accounts.
Any practical experience you can gain in the digital marketing industry will help you demonstrate your capabilities to potential employers. Just look for opportunities where you can be involved in content creation, strategy or analysis. Write or edit blog posts for companies, manage a friend’s social media account, or help a small business or start-up with SEO.
#4. Learn to Use Relevant Tools
This is not something to deliberate on. If you don’t know how to use your tools, you can’t even start to talk about moving further. This should be one of the first things to learn. Learn about as many content management systems, SEO tool platforms, and analytics tools as possible. Knowing how to use the tools for trading in content marketing is a must. My best tool, in no order, includes:
- Hubspot for multiple functions
- WordPress, for blogging, publishing and creating portfolio
- Google Docs for creating and collaborating with content writers
- Plannable, which is best for internal and external content planning
- Airstory for collecting research
- Grammarly for editing and proofreading before publication
- Buzzsumo for tracking performance
#5. Build a Portfolio
When you apply to be a content marketing strategist, you need to showcase your writing and strategic thinking skills. You need to build a portfolio with content strategies, social media content and reports on content performance that will give the potential employer an idea of your capabilities and also help you establish yourself as a thought leader. Even if you have little experience, a portfolio can set you apart in job interviews and show employers you understand the fundamentals of content strategy. You can’t create a portfolio without identifying your niche and having work experience. You have to identify your niche in order to know the kind of content that shows your expertise and you need to create a case study using the work you have worked on in the past.
#6. Grow Your Network
Networking will help you when you apply for a position as a content marketing strategist. This is where you connect with not just anybody but professionals and like-minded individuals from whom you can learn about job prospects. Attend relevant, dusty events or join professional groups on LinkedIn. Putting yourself out there can be intimidating but there is nothing more powerful than connecting with people who understand what you do and can help you reach your goals. So don’t be afraid to reach out and make those connections.
When I started, I was finding it difficult to walk up to people to connect with them but as time went by, I just realised that I wouldn’t grow if I continued that way. I mean, it’s not like they bite or something. The worst that can happen is that they won’t get back to me, which was the case at first because I didn’t show them what I could really do. I decided to push myself and stand before them and I tell you today that I have grown more than expected.
#7. Personalise Your Job Application
Tailor your resume and cover letter to be specific for each job and company that you apply to when you start applying for content strategy roles. Highlight Your relevant skills, qualifications and experiences by using keywords and phrases from the job description. Personalizing your job application will make you stand out in the crowd, allow you to show relevance, and show the company that you have taken the time to understand the company’s goals, challenges, and requirements.
Having enough experience is very important, but if you don’t, you can go ahead and highlight your transferable skills, such as writing, project management, or analytics expertise. Quantify your achievement. For example, I increased website traffic by 25% through targeted content marketing campaigns.
This my FREE checklist is all you need to make it more than a dream:
Content marketing strategist.pdf
What Does a Content Marketing Strategist Do?
Content marketing strategies have a lot of functions they perform. These professionals are creative, digital tacticians, and skilled project managers. The key functions of a content marketing strategist include:
#1. Profile Your Business
They will profile your business to figure out how it is doing and what its main goals are. It’s just all about getting a clear view of where it is and extracting key information that will help generate a content strategy that will help increase your brand’s visibility and credibility.
#2. Identify Your Target Audience
A content marketing strategist helps identify your target audience, which will help your content creator create the exact content that will draw your target audience to your page. They will identify the target audience and consider if there are multiple stakeholders. Their main goal is to generate a content strategy that will meet the needs of their ideal customers.
#3. Go Deeper With Market Research
They will do deeper marketing research to understand the behaviour, struggles, desires, and needs of the target audience. It’s the work of the content marketing strategist to help you understand the customer better, increasing customer satisfaction and effective communication.
#4. Create a Content Strategy and Campaigns to Promote
Without a content marketing strategist, you might create content that doesn’t align with your brand’s goals and objectives. A content marketing strategist will review all existing content and restructure it alongside any new content to create a content strategy to match your goals. They plan a content campaign that can promote your business and its content on social media, email marketing, and paid advertising.
#5. Optimise Content for SEO
They optimise content for SEO. They teach how to optimise content for the search engines using the right tools so that it appears higher on SERPs, which leads to more organic traffic coming to the website. These tools help businesses keep track of how well their business is doing and how to improve it.
#6. Creating Quality Content That Is Up-To-Date on Trends
As a content marketing strategist, you have to understand the concept of quality content and for this content to be quality, you need to be updated. Content marketing strategists must continually look to competitors, influencers and other resources to remain updated. The definition of quality can vary from one project to the next, so a content marketing strategist should know how to develop content that drives quantifiable actions among target consumers, like email list signups, whitepaper downloads, and online purchases.
Key Skills Required for a Content Marketing Strategist
There are many skills required to be a content marketing strategist, but the beauty of it is that you can learn some of them as you grow in your career. The ones I will list below are the essential ones required for a starter. They include:
#1. Understand SEO and Content optimisation
Being a master in SEO is important, but you should be ready to make changes because, anytime the Google algorithm receives an update, the best practices around SEO shift. A good content marketing strategist should be ready to perform keyword research or an SEO audit for existing or brand-new content. These optimisation techniques help to increase content and brand visibility as well as reach on search engines. Together with optimising their SEO skills, these SEO professionals must stay on top of the latest developments as SEO trends and algorithms constantly change.
#2. Strong Writing and Editing Skills
Most times, it’s not the function of the content marketing strategist to write or edit content, but strong writing and editing skills are needed to produce and refine high-copy, quality content. If they maintain their writing abilities, these strategists are better positioned to collaborate with various specialists and creators on their team. They need the skill to ensure the content tells your story, influencing and engaging the brand’s audience. The marketing content or copy, also needs to clearly and effectively communicate the brand message.
#3. Communication and Storytelling Skills
A good content marketing strategist should understand that every aspect of their digital content plays a role in creating a comprehensive and long-term narrative for the brand. Communication and storytelling skills are fundamental to the role, as they are needed to finalise the strategy, coordinate stakeholders, manage team production, and report on business goals. They should expect to be in constant communication throughout the day, whether that’s through email, over the phone, or in person. Even further, they should also be able to turn keywords and data into content pieces with stories at heart. It’s not about being a communicator; you should be a clever one.
#4. Analytical Tools
As a content marketing strategist, you should be obsessed with research because that will definitely be your lifestyle. You should be data-driven and data-oriented because you will rely on data at every point of your job. You don’t do guesswork; you have to look at both the quantitative and quality data to come up with a content strategy that fits your company.
Another thing is being detail-oriented. Details matter a lot, and a good content marketing strategist must pay attention to even the tiniest details. From the tiniest typo in a blog post to the minute difference in keyword difficulty scores for two terms to the percentage change in traffic over three months for a website, they are turned to it all.
#5. Social Media Skills
As we all know, this is the greatest arena for brand awareness and content marketing. Although socially-specific roles exist, you should be knowledgeable about these platforms because you will at some point need to select the ideal media channels to run campaigns. The analysis of social media data to direct strategy is your role. A strong social media intuition can make it easier to determine which concepts are most likely to go viral and which will have a limited impact. This allows for better collaboration between content marketing strategists and social media specialists.
What Is the Difference Between Content Marketing and Content Strategy?
Content strategy is the thought and research put into establishing an effective content marketing campaign. Content marketing is the campaign itself, which comes after strategy.
What Is Another Name for a Content Marketer?
Content marketing can also be called brand journalism, content promotion, or content advertising.
What Popular Company Uses Content Marketing?
Coca-Cola is another brand that’s doing content marketing in a way that benefits them greatly. This is one of the big brands with good marketing that has built a successful strategy around content marketing.
Conclusion
Coming to the end of this article, I believe I have shown you how to become a successful content marketing strategist and what your role as a content marketing strategist is. It’s now time for you to start practicing and be consistent. It doesn’t work like magic, so you can’t achieve success in a day. In fact, being a content marketing strategist is a continuous process because we learn every day, especially when you are using SEO tools.
A content strategist must be ready to show off his or her organizational skills at any given time. Do you envision your future in content marketing strategy? Start today. Remember to always deliver the message that your content must be high-quality.
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