Although content marketing has evolved significantly over the past decade, our ideas of organizational structure have mutated rapidly since March 11, 2020, when working remotely taught all of us that “work is what you do, not where you do it.”
In the “blended working future,” we’ll still need systems that outline how certain activities are directed in order to achieve the goals of our organization. But they can vary a lot.
For example, small organizations (1–99 employees) often have just one person serving the entire organization’s content marketing needs. On the other hand, medium‐size organizations (100–999 employees) generally have small content marketing teams in the two‐ to five‐employee range.
Even large organizations (1,000+ employees), which are the most likely to have both centralized groups and individual teams working throughout the organization, rarely have more than 6–10 employees managing content marketing.
So, how does all the work get done?
The latest data from CMI and MarketingProfs suggests that many companies are both outsourcing content marketing work and asking internal staff with other responsibilities to take on more. However, those who have dedicated internal content marketing resources tend to be more successful with content marketing.
Why? Because companies often outsource content creation to content mills (or content farms) that employ large numbers of freelance writers to generate a large amount of textual web content that was specifically designed to satisfy what they thought were Google’s ranking algorithms or signals.
Ethical (white hat) SEOs have known since May 6, 2011, when Google provided more guidance on the “Panda” algorithm change, that Google’s algorithms are aimed at helping people find “high‐quality” pages and articles by reducing the rankings of “low‐quality” content.
Unfortunately, many of the least successful content marketers didn’t get the memo. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with outsourcing content creation. But you need to vet providers as carefully as you need to vet influencers.
The current challenges of outsourcing content marketing include finding partners with the following qualities:
- Adequate topical expertise
- Understand/can empathize with your audience
- Can provide adequate strategic advice
- Consistently deliver on time
And I’d bet dollars to donuts that the top challenge for content marketers who outsource next year and the year after will continue to be finding partners with adequate topical expertise.
Why? Because subject matter experts (SMEs) are worth their weight in printer ink, which is more precious than gold.
On the other hand, hiring new employees isn’t a panacea either. Being new to an organization comes with a learning curve to become an SME in that brand, even if you’re a content marketing veteran. So, there is no one‐size‐fits‐all solution.
New employees who get hired might work in one of four different types of organizational structures:
- “Flatarchy”: There are no levels of management when you’re a team of one.
- Functional: Employees are divided into specialized groups with specific roles and duties.
- Divisional: Various teams work alongside each other toward a single, common goal.
- Matrix: Employees are divided into teams that report to two managers—a project or product manager along with a functional manager.
So, who sets strategy and who owns implementation of content marketing at small, medium, and large organizations?
Well, this person could be the only content marketing specialist at a small organization, the first content marketing manager at a medium‐size organization, or the new content marketing strategist at a large organization.
In the most successful organizations, this person needs the necessary skills, education, and experience to turn content marketing into a strategic marketing approach. In other words, this person could be you.
These key concepts and definitions should help to prepare you for the OMCA exam. But nothing could have prepared you to respond quickly and effectively to a global pandemic.
That’s why the rest of this chapter goes well beyond “teaching to the test” to foster a holistic understanding of content marketing strategy, tactics, and metrics.
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