The Content Marketing A-Team

If you grew up watching television back in the 1980's, you couldn't miss the popular show 'The A-Team.'

It included a motley cast of characters who were branded as outlaws but who always fought to protect the innocent, fight the bad guys and generally create havoc wherever they went.

George Peppard played their leader and always ended every show with the line 'I love it when a plan comes together.'

I was reminded of this last week when thinking about building the perfect content marketing A-team.

So here I will explain my view on the cast of characters it takes to make sure your content strategy plans always come together'

Content Strategist

This is the leader, the person accountable to the organization for making sure your business is creating, curating and syndicating the content your buyers are looking fo,r in all the channels where they are looking. This person needs to develop the content strategy, and have some authority over the content process, but needs to be a true collaborator as not all the content production resources will be under their control.

Content is everyone's job in businesses today as brands continue to embrace the need to become publishers. And the strategist is helping define the new content marketing terms for your business, creating new inbound marketing content destinations and filling the gaps to better meet the needs of your buyers.

Editor

This is a new role within many organizations. There may have been website editors and even blog editors. But the new editor is not just someone with a journalistic background. It is someone who understands the nature of dynamic content ' the kind of content that generates comments and social shares.

It is also someone who increasingly has their own social influence and not just publishes content but also shares it and helps get the conversation going.

Content Curator

This is the person who finds the best stuff out of the millions of blogs and website articles published every day. They find great authors. They find great content. And then they distill it down to a format that meets the unique needs of their target audience.

But the Curator is more than just someone who has mastered Google alerts. The curator is also a collaborator and a writer who knows how to work with other content producers and to find ways to help them gain exposure.

Channel Manager

The Channel Manager is ultimately responsible for sharing the site content in as many channels of distribution as possible. This person also needs to be analytical as they report out on the success of your content marketing efforts in general and also identifies the content that drives the highest reach, engagement and conversion.

Additionally, they serve as the main response manager for inbound inquiries, requests and issues. The channel mananger's role may seem tactical but between the reach it enables and the insights generated with their reporting, this role has serious strategic implications for your content strategy.

Social Writer

The social writer is a new breed of journalist, content creator or blogger: they not only create the content, they are also able to gain reach all on their own due to a nurtured base of fans and followers.

The social writer is not confined to any single channel but creates engagement across many types of channels such as websites, blogs, social communities and even offline events.

Designer

Last but not least, the designer is the person or team whose sole mission is to ensure your content and channels are maximized to provide the most positive customer experience.

They understand the multi-channel, multi-format needs of today's busy buyer or consumer and designs content and channels that deliver information quickly, visually, easily and in formats that work for the web and the mobile devices that are becoming larger and larger sources of traffic for much of our content.

So what do you think? Did I miss anyone? Who is on your content marketing A-team? And please 'pity the fool' who wrote this since I am just figuring all this out. (Sorry, I had to find some way to work that line in!)

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