Content Operations | How to Build Your Content Team

In a world where so many buyer’s journeys are fueled by content marketing, content operations professionals are in high demand. 

But scaling content can be challenging. In this video, you’ll learn how to build your content team -- including what content roles should be done in-house vs. outsourced, common obstacles that arise when building content operations, and content ops trends.

What Should a Content Team Look Like? And What Should Be Staffed In-House vs. Outsourced?

Your content team size and roles/specialization will vary quite a bit depending on your company size, available resources, and how invested your company is in content creation -- essentially being seen as thought leaders, teachers, and subject matter experts in your industry.

For a minimum viable content team, you need:

• Content strategist (usually in-house or high-level expert consultant)
• Subject matter experts/thought leadership committee (usually in-house, but can also include outside advisors, representative customers, and channel partners)
• Video producer/audio producer (a well-rounded in-house content manager can likely handle very basic video/audio trimming; when volume or product quality warrants, it can be easily and cost-effectively outsourced)
• Writers/copywriters (depending on budget and company size, even if you have an in-house content manager, you'll likely supplement with some freelancers)
• Copyeditor/proofreader (Grammarly is good, but not that good; this copyediting is very easy to outsource; ideally, create a style guide before doing so)
• Marketing coordinator for formatting, optimizing, and scheduling video posts, podcast episodes, blog posts, social media posts, and email newsletters.

Biggest Challenges When Building Out Content Operations

The biggest challenge when building a content operation: getting internal buy-in and a true commitment to content, starting from the top down. 

Content requires a long-term perspective, and it's not particularly easy to map everything into attribution, reporting, or dashboards. Even more challenging for content to be effective, it's a company-wide initiative -- supporting traffic generation (search and social), lead nurturing (email and social), sales cycle acceleration (webinars and case studies), product marketing, sales enablement, and customer marketing.

Emerging Content Ops Trends

To support a digital buyer's journey and product-led growth, which is very clearly where the software world is headed, with even business buyers (B2B) researching and purchasing more like consumers (B2C), content is more powerful and more critical than ever.

The most important best practice: 

The marketing leader of your company must have an equal seat at the table (executive committee) with their peers in sales, customer success, and product. 

Otherwise, the content team becomes glorified order-takers for the rest of the organization -- when the energy really needs to focus on content that provides a game-changing prospect and customer experience.

What have you found most challenging about building your own content operations team? Let me know in the comments.

And if you're serious about building your content team to drive and accelerate companywide revenue growth, be sure to enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.