media junction® company blog

Top 3 Reasons to Hire a Content Manager

Written by Seth Slater | 12/13/22 3:00 PM


If an inbound marketing genie appeared out of thin air and offered you three wishes (and only 3 - you can’t wish for more wishes, Slick)...

...you could wish for a booming business blog tailored to convert the masses, a long litany of brilliant email campaigns, and a kick-ass content manager of steroid-juiced-Rambo proportions to run it all.

Content is King. Tik Tok. Instagram. Facebook. Linked-in. Myspace (yeah, I’m still amigos with Tom). All platforms are fueled by nitrogenous content. 

Put a fast and furious content manager behind the wheel to blast past your competition & last year’s KPIs.    

If your marketing team consistently struggles to create high-quality-converting content, if the relationship between sales and marketing is cinderella-step-sister-esque, and if your website copy, blogging efforts, and email campaigns require mouth-to-mouth resuscitation - hire a content manager. 

This is gospel - you’d never have a football team without a quarterback.

The truth is: content managers prove more integral to success than your favorite all-American QB. Don’t believe me - keep reading, kid. 

Media Junction has skipped around the inbound marketing block once or twice. MJ has designed, redesigned, and migrated websites for over 25 years. We also help companies develop engaging copy, straightforward customer journeys, and a unique brand voice.

And best of all, we train content managers. 

What is a Content Manager?

A content manager directs content creation, circulation, and critical marketing messaging (i.e., press releases). Content managers quarterback SEO-driven content strategies, spearhead email campaigns, run social media channels, and perform data analytics. Content managers have exceptional interpersonal and project management acumen. 

 

This article covers how hiring a content manager allows your company to bring all your content endeavors in-house, bolster your on-page SEO, and develop and nurture a contagious content culture. 

Top 3 Reasons to Hire a Content Manager 

1. Bring All of Your Inbound Marketing In-House 

Get your house in order. 

Marketing in today’s digital diaspora is a siloed, highly disconnected endeavor.

You hire outside copywriters and get locked into slippery marketing agency retainers where everything vital is conveniently “out of scope”.

You drop tens of thousands of dollars annually on outsourced PPC and campaigns that don’t fit your vision.

There’s disconnect. Slippage. Frustration pumping up your BP like a damn circus balloon.

The truth is: when you pay for outsourced attention, you pay for divided attention. 

Not only is there a glaring miscommunication divide from the inside-out, but from inside-in. Be honest - sales and production have absolutely no clue what the hell is going on in marketing and vice versa.  

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down the silos!

Hire a content manager to replace your marketing agency with laser-focused attention and bridge the divide between marketing, sales, and production by creating a content culture.

The size of it: 

A highly trained content manager can easily replace a marketing agency and manage: 

  • The content calendar

  • Blog posts

  • Social media

  • Email campaigns

  • Website copy

  • Analytics

  • Calls to Action (CTAs)

  • Pay-per-click

  • And so much more

And, the cherry on top of this proverbial sundae, a charismatic content manager can bring unity in-house.

Imagine your entire company jam-packed in the conference room, holding hands, singing content Kumbaya. *See point number 3.     

Think Jesus. Gandhi. Big Bird. Think content manager.

2. Bolster Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)   

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with Search Engine Optimization.” - Salbert Seinstein. 

A content manager can take the helm of your Search Engine Optimization strategy: 

  • Develop a keyword playbook revolving around root keywords and long-tailed keywords

  • Kype competitor’s keywords

  • Track your company’s glorious keyword success 

  • Boost organic traffic

  • Implement Latent Semantic Indexing 

  • Optimize images, meta-descriptions, and URL-slugs 

  • Crank out 2-3 blog articles a week 

  • Build out pillar pages chock full of SEO pay-dirt  

  • Turn water into wine 

And, no, I’m not talking out of the side of my neck.  

During my tenure as a content manager for Dalinghaus Construction Inc. (from January 2021 to June 2022):

  • We boosted our total keywords by 791% and our top 3 keywords by 2,623%. 
  • We increased our organic traffic by 2,741%

By June 2022, our organic traffic was worth 68.5k a month (meaning we’d have had to shell out 68.5k monthly in paid advertising to hit the same amount of traffic)

 

 

And it gets better. 

Dalinghaus Construction Inc. has continued to crank out content - moving above and beyond the previous numbers mentioned: increasing revenue by 40% and closed deals by 56%.  

How was all of this possible?

Dalinghaus understood the importance of hiring a humble genius wordsmith (cough, cough) to be a full-time dedicated writer, researcher, and content manager.

Our content marketing strategy was to have one individual solely dedicated to (without any other outside distraction or miscellaneous duties): 

  • Cranking out three high-quality blog posts a week 
  • Running a bi-weekly revenue team meeting >
  • Developing gated downloadable content (white pages, checklists, etc.) 
  • Owning the content calendar  
  • Tracking traffic & revenue analytics    

Content managers prove invaluable when it comes to on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

In short, if you talk the talk and don't walk the walk - don’t expect to hit the numbers above. 

A basketball team without a center…a football team without a quarterback…a hockey team without a goaltender are all doomed to fail. 

You can’t play the content game without a content manager and expect to win big.  

 #micdrop 

 

Pro-tip: 

In my experience (both as a former content manager and current content trainer), hiring a brand new content manager works much better than press-ganging an existing employee into this job description. 

In addition, it generally doesn’t work well to divide content creation between current employees with an already full workload or at all if it doesn’t fit their job description.

Granted, there are a few select examples of this working well (like here at Media Junction), but they are far and few in-between.  

Circumvent animosity and resentment by bringing in a new hire. Heck, we can help you vet them.  

3. Develop a Culture of Content 

You don’t need a company culture manager when your company’s culture is content - you need a content manager.

Yeah - that’s a tongue twister; try it five times fast.   

Content managers create, nurture, and disseminate the heart-felt fire for content across your entire company, breaking down silos with one primary aim: to develop revenue-generating content.

Content managers create a culture of content by:

  • Interviewing subject matter experts (experts in the field and/or experts of a particular product/service)

  • Conducting revenue team meetings - sales and marketing kumbaya-content brainstorms.

Think about it.  

Does your current marketing agency create internal camaraderie and encourage cross-pollination between departments?

Do they make your team feel like their multi-colored chakras are sewn together at the soul, wholly aligned during your weekly check-in? 

If the answer is yes, they need a raise pronto. 

Content managers maintain a content culture by:

  • Floating in and out of offices and zoom meetings for subject matter expert interview

  • Keeping their keen fingers on the pulse of your inbound marketing & regularly reporting back to the rest of the class

  • Developing camaraderie across departments via Revenue Team Meetings and weekly content wrap-ups via a Vidyard or Loom recording (or old-school newsletter) 

Change begins from the inside out - in-house. 

Culture of content math:

More interdepartmental connection = more germane content = more leads-to-customers = more revenue = pop the champagne.


Growing Pains - A Content Manager is Worth The Investment 

In this article, you learned that you should hire a content manager dedicated full-time to content creation to bring all content creation in-house, execute a strong SEO strategy, and develop a companywide culture of content.

You also learned that this strategy works best (in my experience and the experience of IMPACT) if you hire a new team member to fill the content manager's shoes so that you can have a sole soul dedicated to cranking out high-quality content. And that’s it. 

Hire a quarterback to quarterback - not jump in on defense. 

Okay, so you’re seriously mulling over hiring a content manager; what’s next? 

Media Junction enables marketing teams across the globe to pump out ever-green, well-researched, well-executed, voice-driven blog articles that get results.

We are an IMPACT partner and have been trained in their inbound marketing best practices - including utilizing the They Ask, We Answer blogging framework. 

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