Are you struggling to create a successful content marketing strategy? Look no further than the eight main skills that expert content marketers have mastered. These skills can help your business flourish and reach new heights.
1. Creating a Clear and Coherent Content Strategy
Expert content marketers have the ability to formulate and present a clear and coherent content strategy. They conduct research to create a long-term plan and present it to founders or executives for sign-off. This skill is developed over time, making it a must-have for senior content marketers. During interviews, you can determine if an expert can successfully execute a long-term strategy by asking them questions about their experience.
2. Project Management
Project management is a crucial skill for content marketers who need to repurpose content for their ads, email marketing, sales ennoblement material, etc. A strong content strategy is required, considering the entire funnel, and a project manager is needed to report clearly on when content will be ready. They can help the team create expert content for every stage of the funnel.
3. Understanding the Fundamentals of SEO
Expert content marketers must understand the fundamentals of SEO, which is essential for a great content marketing strategy. It builds organic search traffic over time, reduces CAC, and increases brand awareness and trust. An expert content marketer should have a clear understanding of Google’s algorithm, enabling them to optimize content before it goes live.
4. Creative Production Management
Expert content marketers know that every piece of content requires graphic design. They manage a creative production pipeline to ensure blog hero images are delivered on time, and PDFs are designed as required for further down the funnel. They put their best foot forward with great design, creating brand cohesion across all assets.
5. Compelling Copywriting
Great copywriting is crucial to any content marketing strategy. It increases click-throughs from organic search results to the website, grows your branded audience on social media platforms, and makes presentations more appealing and likely to get approval. Expert content marketers have honed this skill over time, increasing conversions through headline A/B testing on highly trafficked pages.
6. Editing for Clarity and Style
Expert content marketers are also great editors. They know how to edit a story for clarity, readability, and brand style. They use content-marketing tools on the market to help with spelling and grammar, making sure the content is error-free.
7. Blog Writing
Great content marketers likely rose to their position through fantastic writing and editing on blogs of their own. They can produce great blog content, even if they manage a team of writers who typically do that for them these days. They check their clips to make sure they write, source, and credit properly, protecting your brand reputation.
8. Analytics and Tracking
Expert content marketers distribute and measure the impact of organic search traffic all the way through the funnel to conversion. They are skilled at understanding website behavior, running content-specific CRO tests, and providing an analytics dashboard to keep you up to date on what is working and why. They build an entire strategy, execution plan, and analytics dashboard, ensuring that every piece of content contributes to the growth of your business.