Ecommerce businesses focused on content marketing have important tasks, from developing a content strategy to actually publishing content. Understanding those tasks will help you build your ecommerce content marketing team.
Useful, informative, and entertaining content has the power to change the way customers behave. It can help your business attract new shoppers, encourage shoppers to buy more, and protect your business from competitors.
The process of creating, publishing, and distributing content can be complicated. There are at least nine jobs or activities a content team will need to complete regularly.
At a small business, one or two people may do all of these jobs. A mid-sized or large ecommerce operation could have one or more folks in each position. You can also extend your team with freelancers or an agency.
9 Content Marketing Tasks
Content strategist. Your content strategist is your team leader. This person is primarily responsible for your company’s content strategy and setting content goals related to larger business goals.
If your business wants to attract new shoppers, it is this strategist who will define the direction your content will take to reach that goal. The strategist may choose the type of content you produce and the channels for which you produce it.
Content analyst. Master of the page view, the download, and conversion rate, your content analyst is responsible for connecting the dots between the content you produce and the goal it is supposed to achieve.
The analyst determines if the content strategy is working and makes suggestions to optimize the effort.
At a small ecommerce business, the strategy task and the analysis task could fall to the same person. A large operation might further segment analysis with individuals focused on specific channels.
Content project manager. The content project manager ensures each specific content tactic is executed on plan. If there is supposed to be a daily tweet to support your current content project, this person will ensure that tweet is written and scheduled.
It is worth noting that the project manager may not be a content producer. So the person doing this task might not write the aforementioned tweet or even post it. Rather, this person makes certain those tasks and all tasks associated with a project are being completed as expected.
Content researcher. This role is akin to the investigative reporter searching for the story. For this task, it will be common to monitor social media to identify trends or to visit sites like Quora to discover what questions your content team might be able to answer.
The researcher will be responsible for gathering the source information to support articles, graphics, videos, and podcasts. This task might also include curating content — discovering other useful content to share on social media feeds.
Content writer. Writing is the most fundamental content marketing task. It is the act of communicating online. Your content team’s writer might compose an article, create a tweet, or write the script for your next YouTube video.
From the content marketing perspective, if your business can do nothing else, it must be able to write.
Content editor. Closely related to writing is the task of editing. While large ecommerce content marketing teams might have dedicated editors, many writers will read the work of other writers, to look for spelling, grammar, style, and brand errors.
It is important not to allow the editor to also become the bottleneck. Editing should be part of your normal content creation process and the number of editors should be proportional to the content produced.
Content creative. Content creatives are your graphic designers, photographers, and videographers. This task helps to translate words into images. This role can be particularly important if your content strategy wisely includes video.
Shooting, editing, and producing video — complete with motion graphics and the like — will be vital if you want to share content on YouTube or similar.
Content talent. If you choose to create conferences, lessons, videos, radio programs, or podcasts, as examples, you may need some talent, such as a professional host or presenter who is comfortable being on stage or in front of the camera.
Don’t underestimate the value of this position. It can make a significant difference.
Content publisher. Not to be confused with the publisher of a magazine or newspaper, your content publisher is the person who actively schedules posts, articles, and videos. This person is adept at the software necessary for publishing your content, be it on a content management system, YouTube, SoundCloud, or similar.
Workload Differs by Company Size
From content strategist to content publisher, there are at least nine distinct roles or tasks your ecommerce content marketing team will need to complete, repeatedly.
A mid-sized ecommerce business might have just a few folks sharing the workload. A large company could have several writers or creatives. And at a small ecommerce operation, the entire content marketing program could fall to a single individual.