What should be the right size and composition of your content marketing team?

While experts say that a fully equipped content marketing team should have people capable of pulling off a campaign through all the stages, they also feel there is no defined size for such a team. BuzzInContent finds out how brands can build a high-performing team that stands out from the rest

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Akanksha Nagar
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A lot of brands today foresee content marketing as a long-term strategy, but not many know how to formulate a content team that can function to the best of its abilities to work for the brand’s overall objective.

Experts have time and again stated that a poorly structured team is not only able to meet a brand’s goals but is also a waste of time and money. A well-structured team, on the other hand, can produce great content that speaks directly to the audiences’ needs, which in turn will generate more leads and grow revenue.

But how does one go about developing a content marketing team? Is there any well-defined structure written somewhere for brands to consider? Most importantly, how can it weigh down a brand’s marketing efforts?

BuzzInContent talks to experts to find out.

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Vishesh Sharma

Vishesh Sharma, Head, Content Marketing, Corp Comm and Start Ups, Angel One Ltd, said that a content marketing team can be one person or 10, depending on one’s strategy.

“We at Angel One recognise that the future is digital. In the digital economy, individual creators act as one people businesses. A travel blogger is a one-person content marketing team. At the same time, an institution such as Angel One cannot restrict itself to one channel, one approach. We are serving the country, and the country has dozens of channels. We have structured our teams in the following roles: content strategists and content writers, who have created an ecosystem of content creators,” he said. 

The company believes that everyone in the content team should think like a creator.

“If we were to think of our content marketing efforts as a brand-agency structure, it would mean that people are split in their thought processes. So we have instead split the content into three forms — Hero, Hub and Hygiene. As a whole team, we and our agency partners have built specific capabilities for each type—a regular team working at scale for Hygiene content while a specialist team working for real-time high impact Hero content. This also means different technologies and approaches. Our SmartMoney education portal serves as a timeless piece of content with quizzes and certifications, while our weekly stock picks work as rapid-fire, low shelf life content. The channels, the creators and even the content itself are radically different. And both we and our agencies share this common vision.”

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Shivani Kamdar

Shivani Kamdar, Head of Content at SoCheers, said that it’s ideal for brands to have a team that understands content marketing in general, and has a 360-degree purview. The team structure should be proportional to the size of business, she said.

For agencies, the key to developing a good comprehensive structure is looking at the kind of services they offer, the brands and projects to manage under them and the kind of requirements they cater to.

Defining an ideal content team, she said, “A self-sustaining team comprises content writers, film writers, analysts, planners, and producers. While each department holds its own significance, a great content marketing team will usually have a range of writers —writers who are good at short-form content, those who have a knack for long-form writing such as blogs and websites and those who are good storytellers, who can take you through a visual journey just with their words. That’s what an ideal team looks like in an overarching manner.”

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Tapan Mishra

According to Tapan Mishra, CEO and Founder, Seniority and Evergreen Club, a content marketing team should essentially have the following people—a strategist who plans out the strategies to derive more users to the platform. A strategist also takes care of SEO, promotions, content calendar, etc. A manager who assigns tasks to the team and makes sure that everything is being properly implemented. The manager also tracks impressions and conversions: website visits, search rankings, content engagement, sales and leads, attribution, etc. Thirdly, creators, who are a group of people who create blog posts, videos, social media posts, etc. 

A brand specifically identifies the values and scope of the business while an agency helps in finding out ways to market the business and to compete with other businesses.

Mishra said that the content marketing team’s structure is different for both the brand and agency. A brand requires a well-structured team that is responsible for understanding the entire scope of business — from developing the tone to researching, building marketing strategies, taking care of promotions, bringing out the correct voice of the brand and preparing plans by analysing data.

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Sidharth Singh

While traditional structure and hierarchies are a good start, the confluence of technology, creativity and experience is what makes an exceptional content team stand apart from the rest, said Sidharth Singh, Co-founder CupShup.

While it is possible to have people across verticals and leverage synergies across them, he feels agencies have an unfair advantage over brands for the sheer depth they acquire while working on brands from different industries.

“Taking a leaf out of the movie The Prestige, an ideal content marketing team should be able to pull off The Pledge, The Turn and, finally, The Prestige out of any campaign it undertakes. The strategy works as a pledge where you lay out the roadmap for next month or next quarter. It might look like an ordinary or no-brainer to someone alien to content marketing but it is just the skeleton and offers the course of action. You build on it as you proceed and change gears mid-way while keeping the objectives and campaign goals in mind. The manoeuvring is something that the content team works assiduously on and is derived from the experience it has gathered previously. And finally comes The Prestige, the magic, the unexpected, which achieves and sometimes surpasses the objectives which the team had set out for the campaign. A fully equipped content marketing team should have people capable of pulling the campaign through all these stages,” he added.

There are many reasons why brands often fail miserably at content marketing. But is a wrong team structure one of them?

Can a right structure generate qualified sales and leads?

Sharma agreed that a wrong structure can weigh down on the content efforts.

“If I were to plan my content one piece at a time, I'd end up paying per piece. For instance, if we do podcasts, I'd book a studio once every day. If we plan it ahead, we can book it over a weekend and record all we have to. So a wrong team, poor planning and, most importantly, wrong strategy can cause you to burn money with no results. That's a bad investment,” he said.

The right content marketing structure involves a team that thoroughly understands the tone of the business/brand, its competitors, target audience and the ways in which the business/brand can be understood by its users. And Mishra believes that all of this is crucial in generating qualified leads and sales.

“Yes, it is important to develop a proper structure to gain better results since content marketing is essential in building a business’/brand’s reputation online,” he said.

In contrast, both Kamdar and Singh believe that there is nothing called a wrong team structure and it is a matter of perspective. 

“A team structure won’t really weigh down the quality and quantum of leads if we hire the right kind of people and then groom them accordingly in a way where they can mould themselves and adapt to every environment,” said Kamdar.

Singh said it is just how far your brand can go and how relevant it can sound to your TG.

“It is very much possible to be outstandingly creative or technically superior or have a great marketing mix. But, it is very difficult to find that sweet spot where you leverage all of the above for your brand. A wrong structure means one or two pillars not raised up to the mark, which ultimately tilts your brand and hampers the sales or leads or even a recall,” he added.

But if there is nothing like a wrong team structure, do specific roles and team members not matter too? 

Sharma said that for Angel One, the number of people is not important. What is important is the quality and scale of content. 

“If my strategy requires 20 people, we'll employ 20 content creators. As a company that has seen 36x in one year in terms of organic traffic, we cannot restrict itself to a templatised team structure. We constantly learn and expand our horizons, both individually and as a team. That said, there are certain building blocks you don't want to operate without — a monthly strategy has to be thought of and defined, and basic hygiene content has to be in place. The created content has to be distributed via a Hub of various owned and earned media assets so that it reaches the right audience. Hero campaigns have to be built around the different communities in the stock market, which add to the bottom line of the company. The 3Hs are our core and we continuously build around it,” he said. 

Kamdar too said that there’s no one right size.

Teams should be formed based on the need of the business and service offered.

“You can hire one person who’s an expert in four departments vis-à-vis hiring specialists specific to each requirement. Here also, the kind of hiring will be different for a brand and an agency,” he said. 

It totally depends upon how the management envisions the brand and its end objectives.

But yes, Singh said that a good content marketing team must have four-five defined specific roles to cater to the ever-evolving needs of the brand. 

However, Mishra believes that there is a definite number and specific roles for the content marketing teams.

The number depends upon the size of the business/brand and how actively it engages with its audience.

He said it is essential to have a manager or a team lead to assign tasks and monitor the quality. A content strategist who plans out the course of action, writers for blog posts and social media posts, content editors and video editors.

Despite the size of the team, experts said that it is the members and their expertise who play a huge role in making content marketing successful.

right size and composition of your content marketing team