Job Description: Chief Content material Officer

CMI first described the Chief Content material Officer (CCO) job greater than a decade in the past.

In these days, firms wanted senior leaders to spearhead the combination of “content material advertising and marketing actions” into extra conventional advertising and marketing campaigns.

At the moment, content material management should develop past advertising and marketing (even content material advertising and marketing) to embody an all-communication technique.

Which means at this time’s chief content material officer (no matter whether or not that’s the title the particular person holds) guides the content material that makes up each expertise a buyer, viewers member, or prospect has with a model.

What does that appear like in apply? I’ll clarify and supply a chief content material officer job description you may copy.

First, although, let’s have a look at the context of what’s modified – as a result of that informs the scope of the brand new content material chief function.

At the moment’s chief content material officer guides the #content material that makes up each buyer expertise, says @Robert_Rose through @CMIContent. #ContentMarketing Click on To Tweet

The way it began: Content material serves advertising and marketing

After we final up to date our view on the chief content material officer function, we described it inside a content material advertising and marketing context. Most individuals who carried out that perform held titles like vp of content material advertising and marketing, head of content material advertising and marketing, editor-in-chief, and even chief storyteller.

Few held the “chief” title, as few firms thought of content material a c-suite perform (like finance, operations, expertise, or advertising and marketing).

Just a few services and products manufacturers – particularly those who have constructed separate content material or media operations – have adopted the CCO title (Peloton, Dun & Bradstreet, and Ralph Lauren, for instance). Goldman Sachs, AirBnB, and Procter & Gamble have comparable roles however name them vp of content material, head of content material, or chief media officer.

The chief content material officers in these organizations deal with the artistic facet of content material product improvement. In media firms, the CCO is the main artistic voice for the model’s product technique. In product and providers manufacturers, the content material chief is more likely to run the strategic initiative of a media division or head up a centered perform of artistic providers.

However content material technique just isn’t a separate division at most manufacturers. Neither is it separated from the gross sales and advertising and marketing group.

That should change. And it’s beginning to.

Virtually a yr in the past, I wrote about how content material technique and advertising and marketing technique are coming collectively. I requested the query:

What if content material and advertising and marketing as a apply … was handled as essential within the enterprise as its present services or products?

And why shouldn’t it’s? Content material makes up the whole thing of communications from any firm.

At the moment, virtually everybody within the group communicates immediately with audiences, equivalent to clients, companions, press, analysts, and staff.

The way it’s going: Content material significance skyrockets

We’ve moved past the necessity to combine content material advertising and marketing into the broader advertising and marketing ecosystem. That occurred.

Take into account this: 71% of entrepreneurs in our latest B2B analysis mentioned content material is extra essential to their organizations than it was a yr in the past.

Content material is a enterprise technique at this time. Full cease.

However that merger of selling content material, content material advertising and marketing, and content material operations I discussed? It’s created a urgent want to arrange and coordinate not solely what advertising and marketing markets but additionally what gross sales sells, accounts service, PR relates, and HR recruits.

Because of this, content material management appears to be like totally different going ahead. Right here’s how:

The content material chief (whether or not referred to as chief content material officer or not) should personal communication technique. The content material perform just isn’t an inside, on-demand content material merchandising machine for the remainder of the enterprise – it’s a strategic contributor to each buyer expertise with the enterprise.

The chief content material officer should lead all operational content material approaches, together with content material advertising and marketing, content material operations, branded content material, native promoting, and the rest that drives the creation of media-powered buyer experiences as a enterprise technique.

The CCO should set lead (and measure) experiences that align with and contribute to enterprise targets. The content material staff of at this time and tomorrow builds audiences via owned media experiences that may be monetized in a number of methods. They drive the execution of content material for short-term promoting campaigns. They drive engagement and shares on social media and natural search visitors from revolutionary earned media and word-of-mouth methods. However additionally they assist visibility, transparency, and inside communication of the content material lifecycle – from ideation to creation, administration, activation, promotion, and even archiving. And the CCO leads the event of the infrastructure required to do all of that.

The CCO leads content material for each a part of the shopper’s journey. The content material perform shouldn’t be relegated to top-of-funnel gross sales enablement property. It’s not restricted to Website positioning-focused articles driving model consciousness. It’s not restricted to customer-support how-to movies or buyer occasions. The content material perform holds the experience to ship viewers worth at each stage of the buyer journey. And the chief content material officer guides the appliance of that experience throughout the corporate.

Whether or not you name the function chief content material officer, vp of content material, head of content material, or one thing else issues lower than the perform of the place.

Listed below are the brand new necessities for the place. Be at liberty to repeat this description to advocate for a CCO at your model. You may also use it to information your individual improvement if the highest content material place is your aim.

Job description: Chief content material officer

Definition/description

The chief content material officer is a key member of the senior administration staff. The CCO leads the executive, operational, and artistic capabilities of content material as a strategic advertising and marketing and communications perform within the enterprise.

Reviews to

Chief government officer/chief working officer or chief advertising and marketing officer/VP of selling

Place abstract

The CCO’s aim is to safe the creation, coordination, consistency, and worth of content material as a aggressive benefit for the enterprise.

The CCO oversees all advertising and marketing and communications content material initiatives, each inside and exterior, throughout a number of platforms and codecs to drive worth to each the enterprise and the audiences served.

This particular person will need to have management expertise in artistic technique, coordinated content material operations, channel optimization, model consistency, viewers segmentation, translation/localization, and significant measurement of content material’s worth to the enterprise.

The place is the chief of a content material operation that collaborates throughout a number of organizational departments – together with public relations, communications, advertising and marketing, customer support, IT, gross sales, human assets, and government management. Thus, the CCO ought to anticipate to have a hand in defining, governing, and deploying the general model’s communication strategy.

Obligations

The CCO owns all operational initiatives concerning the creation, administration, activation, and measurement of content material.

The CCO’s major duty is to find out the working mannequin and content material strategy that can supply the best worth for the group, after which lead its administrative, operational, and artistic capabilities.

• Design and implement content material methods, plans, and procedures that assist and lengthen advertising and marketing and communications initiatives, each brief and long-term, and set up a constantly evolving content material apply
• Set complete targets for efficiency and progress for content material as a strategic perform within the enterprise
• Leverage market information to develop content material themes/subjects, then execute a plan to create the property that assist a standpoint and result in crucial behavioral metrics
• Supervise the administration and upkeep of viewers personas, content material inventories and audits, buyer journey maps, Website positioning methods, and aggressive audits
• Set up requirements, methods, greatest practices, and workflow processes for managing the content material lifecycle, together with requesting, producing, distributing, selling, measuring, and retiring content material, together with making certain all content material is in step with model, model, high quality, tone of voice, and optimized for the varied consumer experiences and throughout all acceptable channels
• Collaborate with the corporate’s senior artistic staff leaders and channel homeowners on all initiatives to establish content material wants and alternatives to make sure effectivity and consistency throughout channels, verticals, and purposeful departments
• Work with the corporate’s technical/digital groups to implement an environment friendly content material administration system (CMS), digital asset administration strategy, and different important expertise methods (e.g., advertising and marketing automation, electronic mail administration, social media administration, analytics, and so on.)
• Create an organizational construction and rent/supervise leaders in all content material verticals; handle the efforts of different staff’s writers, editors, producers, and content material managers
• Conduct ongoing usability assessments to gauge content material effectiveness; Collect information and deal with analytics (or supervise those that do) and make suggestions based mostly on these outcomes; work with homeowners of content material to revise and measure content material and advertising and marketing targets
• Set up efficiency targets and oversee ongoing measurement protocols to judge and optimize content material effectiveness. This consists of gathering information and dealing with analytics (or supervising those who do), in addition to making suggestions based mostly on efficiency outcomes
• Guarantee a constant international, enterprise-wide strategy for content material, together with implementing taxonomies, meta tag buildings, structured content material, and localization/translation methods the place acceptable
• Take part in content material enlargement actions (investments, acquisitions, alliances, and so on.)

Success indicators

Efficiency expectations needs to be based mostly on the continuous enchancment of buyer nurturing, changing, and retention via storytelling and will increase in new prospects introduced into the enterprise via constant improvement and deployment of content material.

The first standards for achievement are buyer and worker affinity, measured by lifetime buyer worth, buyer satisfaction, and worker advocacy. Extra standards for gauging success might embrace:

• Constructive model recognition and message consistency throughout chosen printed channels
• Features in outlined buyer engagement metrics (measured by customers taking the specified motion – conversions, subscriptions, purchases, and so on.)
• Web site and social media visitors progress
• Conversion metrics definition and progress
• Enhancements in constructive social media sentiment
• Constructive buyer suggestions and survey information
• Will increase in vital search engine key phrase rankings
• Reductions within the time it takes clients to maneuver via the gross sales/shopping for cycle
• Creation of latest up-sell and cross-sell alternatives via content material evaluation and software
• A stronger enterprise-wide deal with driving gross sales, saving prices or creating happier clients via content material

What we ignored of the CCO description

You may discover that we omitted some issues often included in job descriptions: schooling necessities and years of expertise.

Nobody faculty diploma covers every little thing it is advisable be a CCO at this time. A liberal arts diploma may assist. So may a communications, journalism, or advertising and marketing background. Then once more, experience in your group’s trade may matter extra.

Equally, the variety of years of expertise in all probability issues lower than what somebody discovered and completed throughout these years.

Does your group have a task that handles all these obligations? What would you add or change about this checklist? Let me know within the feedback.

Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising and marketing Institute