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How the Best Podcasters Do Their Work Faster

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How the Best Podcasters Do Their Work Faster

Best practices to help you create the highest quality podcasts in the least possible time.

My aim, right here, is to help you to create a podcast in the shortest time possible.

And I’m not just talking about any old podcast. I mean a great podcast. Your best possible podcast!

Because this is where so many people get caught out. It’s where shows go to die. The podcaster spends too much time making every episode. So much that it just doesn’t fit into their week or even their life. By that point, it just drains all the fun and value out of the entire show!

Of course, it’s worth noting that different types of shows take different amounts of time to produce (go ask an audio drama producer how much time they spend on dialogue editing alone!). And sometimes, spending more time on your show can improve the quality, or what you get out of it. But, that’s only if you spend that time on the right stuff. And I believe it’s possible to do those right things in far less time than you think.

So that’s what I’ll do in this article: show you the best of those “right things” and help you create the best possible product in the least possible time.

Who I Am and What You’ll Learn

By way of a quick “who the heck’s this guy?”: my name is Colin Gray, and I’m a podcaster, writer, teacher, and general dogsbody at The Podcast Host. We create a network of our own shows and help thousands of others produce their own through our content.

Plus, we run a podcast maker tool called Alitu. The whole purpose behind Alitu is to offer recording, editing, and publishing tools that automate and simplify, making it far quicker and easier to create your show. And a lot of that is based on the “right ways” that I’ll talk about here.

Over the past ten years, I’ve gone from fitting a podcast around a completely different normal job (teaching teachers how to teach — meta, huh?), to trying to fit as many podcasts as possible into my current job and designing tools to help others do it quicker!

It was all about cutting out the cruft and figuring out what’s really worthwhile in creating a high-quality, successful show. I’ll talk about all those insights here, including:

  • How to plan content in the minimum time, and in a way that makes it easy to deliver
  • How to get the most from everything you do create
  • Recording & editing tricks to save time
  • How to find and learn the tools that cut down on processing time

So, let’s get into it. Time to apply a little lightning to your podcast!

Why Seasons are Rocketfuel for You and your Audience

Seasons-based podcasting is the most underrated workflow hack in the industry. And, even better, it’s a massive driver of listener success, loyalty, and audience growth, too.

How? Well, there are three reasons.

Planning Nirvana

You know when you turn up at your desk for recording time and think: “Alrighty … podcast time. I’ve got an hour to get this baby recorded! Soooo … what shall I talk about … ”

An hour later, you’re still only halfway through planning the episode. Or even worse, you’re still staring at a blank screen, trying to think of an idea.

Well, here’s a new tack: take an hour of your life and think about your next season instead.

Take a question you often get from your listeners, or a topic you know you want to cover, and then break it down. One of the biggest mistakes we make as podcasters is trying to fit too much into an episode. We do it because we care. We want to give a lot of value, but actually, it’s shortchanging your listeners, often missing details, or giving them too much to think about all at once. Instead, break that topic down into its component parts.

I did a season on podcast equipment a while back. I could have easily covered it in one episode but it’s better to break it down. One episode on microphones, one on mixers, one on recording software, and one on editing software.

Normally I can work this out in less than ten minutes for a topic I know well. Maybe 20 to 30 if I need to do a bit of research. I’ll end up with a list of maybe six or seven episodes, sometimes up to 15 or 20.

Then, I’ll take another 20 minutes to put some meat on them bones, and do a set of five to ten bullet points within each main topic, outlining what I’ll cover.

By the end of the hour (or less!) I’ve got a plan for an entire season’s worth of content, often two or three months long, maybe more.

So now, instead of the usual, “Oh no! What do I talk about this week!”, next time you open up that season plan, check out the next episode’s script and hit record. Easy!

And yes, this can still work for interview shows. Do all of the above, and only THEN start to think about guests. This makes for far better content. Instead of just picking out random pseudo-famous people in your niche, just for their name, choose based on expertise and knowledge.

Search around for blog posts covering the topics you have in your plan. Find people with interesting angles on those topics, and then invite them on the show. You’ll create far better, much more focused content as a result.

Better Batching

With a season plan, you can really easily take advantage of another huge timesaver: batch recording.

Matthew is my co-host on our “how to podcast” show, Podcraft. It’s a seasons-based show, and we’ve long recorded it in batches. We co-host the podcast, so we can plan a season together, and then we’ll record two to three episodes at a time.

I know people who can do four episodes in one sitting, but we always find we hit a wall around three. Still, that means we only have to arrange recording time every two or three weeks, rather than every single week.

Editing can be batched, too. As anyone who has to do a lot of task switching knows, doing a few of them all together takes far less time than three separate editing sessions.

Listener-Powered Content

Every podcaster knows they should be getting their listeners more involved with their show. It drives engagement, loyalty, and huge listener growth. But, it’s a big time suck … monitoring emails, social media, and voicemails every single week can be draining.

Seasons put something brand new in your toolbox: a break!

At the end of the season, you say: “Okay, thanks for listening! We’ll be back in 6 weeks, on August 1st. During that time, though, here’s what I want you to do. We’re going to cover podcast equipment on the next season. Tell me, what gear are you using right now? What gear have you tried that was rubbish? What are your biggest struggles or questions with equipment that I can answer? Send me a tweet,or an email, or (best of all) leave a voicemail at ..”

Then you take a well-earned break!

Towards the end of the break, you can batch-process all of this. Take an afternoon to collect it all together, collate the tweets and the emails, and process the audio recordings so it’s all ready for the new season. This is so much easier and more efficient than doing little drips and drabs every few days.

Even better, this can power the planning we mentioned above. The questions will direct your episodes, and you can plan ahead, including all the relevant questions in the right episode. In that way, you include and involve your listeners in the show and drive a huge amount of value and loyalty. Plus, you create better content because it’s based on the thoughts of real people.

Fly Solo (At Least a Little)

This one makes people a little nervous, at least for those that normally fly with a guest! Recording alone is one of the biggest time-saving moves you can make, particularly if you’re a regular interviewee on other shows.

If you’ve never tried it, imagine a world where you don’t have to coordinate calendars to find a time that suits everyone. Imagine planning the episode yourself, knowing that you don’t have to prompt your co-host or think of a few backup questions in case that interview goes awry. Imagine having 100 percent control over what’s said (because you’re doing the saying!), so there are no tangents, no fluff and no … editing? Imagine just deciding to record, off the cuff, and 20 minutes later, you have an episode in the bag.

All of that’s possible with solo recording, plus the added benefit of showcasing your own knowledge and talent for a change, rather than your guest (I’m talking about interview shows in particular).

If you haven’t tried it, take one episode a month and fly solo. See how much time it saves you and how your listeners might like to hear what you think, for a change.

The Minimum Effective Editing Process

Okay, we’ve planned it out and we’ve recorded an episode. Now comes the most dangerous of potential time-eaters: editing.

I still come across so many people who spend 2x or 3x the length of their show in editing. For example, taking two or three hours to edit a one-hour recording. I even meet people who spend 5x to 10x the length of their show in production! It’s just unsustainable.

Part of that is dialogue editing, listening through the whole thing to find and eradicate their mistakes. Painful! We’ll tackle that in the next tactic.

The other part is audio engineering; namely audio cleanup, adding music or ads, layering tracks, and exporting the whole thing.

So, how do we make it easy? By adding constraints. You can do so much less by applying the right mindset to your editing. I’ve got two processes here for you to try.

MEE (Minimum Effective Editing)

This is perfect for early-stage podcasters. I often recommend following this for your first 10 to 20 episodes, at a minimum. There’s so much you’re learning during those first months, and editing really is low on the impact list. There’s so much more value in working on your presentation and content design skills. (Really, you could extend this mindset to any podcaster at any stage.)

Simply cut editing down to two things, and two things only:

  1. Trim
  2. Normalize

Trim means trimming the start and the end only. Usually that means cutting out the silence and the paper rustling after you hit record and before you start speaking. Then, do the same for the end.

Normalize means leveling out the volume of your show. This is the one and only “audio engineering” task that’s essential. It means your show won’t be too quiet, and the volume of the different speakers should be relatively even so you don’t have your listeners reaching for their volume control every time the speaker changes.

Most editing tools have normalization features included, such as Audacity.

Notice that this doesn’t include dialogue editing at all. So, you can’t cut out mistakes! That’s a constraint that has a few benefits:

  • You can’t use editing as a crutch, so you learn to improve the way you speak, fast! Learn to drop the ums and ahs while you speak, not afterward.
  • You avoid this time-warp rabbit hole altogether because even a little “Oh I’ll just remove that one thing” can turn into an hour of editing.
  • You sound more human. “Oh, sorry, that’s not what I meant! <laugh> Let me say that again.” This is honest. Open. Relatable. People identify with you more closely.

Instead, record with a “live broadcast” mindset. Pretend you’re live on air, the show has to go on. There’s a chance you’ve done that very thing — Facebook, YouTube, Instagram — and survived! So take it into your podcasting, and reap the time-saving benefits. even if just for your first few episodes.

MEE-V2

Later in your podcasting career, you might decide you do want to add a bit more polish. Whether that’s episode 20 or 200, here’s the 2nd level: MEE-V2.

  1. Trim
  2. Click Edit
  3. Noise Reduction
  4. Limit and Normalize
  5. Add Music
  6. Overlap and Fades

That polish comes mainly in the form of music: adding your own audio branding, and putting in some pro-sounding overlaps and fades.

MEE-V2 also includes an extra couple of audio engineering steps. A hard limit helps to improve your audio leveling, and noise reduction is a big help for most of us who are recording in bog-standard rooms rather than recording studios.

We’re not delving into a lot of the audio engineering that you’ll find around the podcasting web, such as EQ, compression, de-essing, or plosive removal. Those are useful in their place, sure, polish for your audio — but they’re non-essential.

Finally, you’ll notice the mention of a click edit. Yes, I hear you breathe a sigh of relief: now you can remove a few mistakes from your audio. But only the big ones that really can’t stay in! We still want to maintain that live-recording mindset to stay human, and we’ll use a click-edit process that slashes the time required to complete. You’ll see that in the next tactic.

MEE-V3?

Before we move on, I’ll mention another possibility here. You can automate a whole lot of MEE-2 and add even more polish using the right tools.

I came up with MEE years ago in an attempt to help our readers defeat the monster that is editing. But, even then, it was still a task that dragged shows under.

So, we built our own tool, Alitu, to automate MEE-2, and then to add a whole lot more polish and assistance on top.

Alitu podcast editing software can be used to record solo episodes or call recorder to bring in a guest.

For example, inside Alitu you can record a solo episode, or use our call recorder to bring in a guest. That recording is then automatically cleaned up — noise reduction, limiting, normalization, EQ, de-essing, plosive removal, the whole nine yards. Then it’s popped into the episode builder, which adds your music, overlaps and fades automatically. You can add in any intros or outros required there, too, or any ads or inserts for the episode.

All that’s left is to use Alitu’s audio editor to search out your clicks with 2x speed control (more on this below), highlight the edits, and then hit publish. You can even publish to Alitu’s in-built hosting if you don’t have hosting set up yet, so it’s all in one place.

Alitu features in-built hosting to publish episodes.

Alitu offers a week-long free trial to test out the platform before purchasing.

Click Editing

Now, to click editing!

It’s a classic, but always worth including since it’s a revelation to anyone who hasn’t heard it. It tackles the dreaded task of combing through a podcast episode, minute by minute, to track down those mistakes that you know have to be removed.

Instead, with click editing, I would normally edit our 30-minute average Podcraft episode in less than 5 minutes. Here’s how it works:

When I make a mistake in my show, I create a visual marker in the waveform by clicking my tongue three times. You can also clap, or snap your fingers. They all work. The goal is to create something that’s really easy to see on the waveform when you get into your editing package.

You’re speaking. You make a mistake or trip over your tongue, or need to cough. So, you stop. You pause for a few seconds. Click. Click. Click. You pause for another few seconds. Then you start speaking again.

This is very visible on the waveform, as shown highlighted in red.

Details of waveform in Alitu's editing feature.

That means, when you get to editing, you just get down to a reasonable zoom level and scan the waveform, looking for these signals.

Then you highlight the end of the sentence before the mistake, right through to the point before you restart, and delete. Mistake eradicated!

Pro Tip: You can quite easily get in the habit of remembering the start of the sentence before you made your mistake, and then restarting with the same first few words. This means that when I find a mistake in editing, I listen to the re-start first, and then go back a bit and find the same few words before the mistake. I know that’s where I have to start the edit. That saves another few seconds, every time!

Take Control of Errant Interviewees

Let’s finish up with a tactic that not only comes under the category of “time saver,” both in recording and editing, but also bleeds into “improved content.” It’s the simple concept of taking ownership of your show, and your content.

The thing is, interview shows are great when done well. But, they’re often not done well. That can lead to sub-par content, sure, but even worse, it leads to a whole lot of extra time in your process.

It takes more time to record because the guest goes off on tangents. Or they don’t stay on point and fail to answer questions. That all means more time editing, trying to cut the fluff, and elevating the quality.

Instead, take control, and give some guidelines before you start. Here are a few of the things I might say:

  1. I’d love to share a few bits of guidance. I know my audience really well, and I’ve learned that these can help you come across in the best possible way with them.
  2. We like to keep this show really conversational. So, try to keep answers short and sharp, less than a minute, two at most.
  3. Don’t worry, we’ll get into detail, but I’ll ask about the parts I know my audience loves.
  4. Always feel free to ask me questions back, so we’re both involved, and it flows well.
  5. will interrupt you from time to time. Not because your content’s bad, but because I know what my audience wants and I’ll keep us tracking with that.

Keep emphasizing that this is in their best interests. This makes them look good! You know your audience, and if the guest wants to make a great impression, then you can help them do that. But, only if they work with you, and let you guide the conversation (#3).

That primarily means shorter answers (#2), and being prepared to be interrupted (#5 — and this is so much easier when you mention it before you start).

I’ve also found that #4 is a really interesting hack, for two reasons. First, conversations are much better when it’s two ways. And second, asking questions just puts people into conversation-mode rather than monologue-mode. (It also helps avoid the 5-minute solo tangents that are the bane of any interviewer’s life!)

How Will You Cut Your Production Time?

To me, there are two big ideas to this.

First, simple routines and purposeful tools. That means:

  • Keep your weekly routine as simple and as regular as possible.
  • Use seasons to simplify your planning.
  • Go solo to simplify the logistics.
  • Record as if you’re live and commit to really simple editing.

Make it your goal to find those routines that repeat so that you can fit the entire workflow easily into your week.

Secondly, it means using tools with real purpose. As podcasters, we can be guilty of adding in on-trend tools or tactics that take up more time, rather than save it. Instead, pick fewer, better tools, and go deep with them.

The click trick is a tool, use it to save hours in editing. Alitu is a tool that works great alongside it, and adds more features to annihilate the time spent editing and engineering. If they don’t work for you, though, there are dozens of choices. Find just a few that fit you, personally, and go deep.

Above all, use these tactics to hone your personal routine, find the methods that work for you, and offer up all that extra time to the content itself. Use it to talk to your listeners. What do they like? What do they not like? Find out what they really want from you. That’s what makes the big difference. Not an extra pass of compression, or a jot of noise reduction. Instead, get simple, get tooled up, and then you can really start thriving as a podcaster.

The post How the Best Podcasters Do Their Work Faster appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

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Revolutionising affiliate marketing in the era of influencers, ET BrandEquity

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Revolutionising affiliate marketing in the era of influencers, ET BrandEquity

Affiliate marketing spends in India are estimated to be Rs 2500 crore in FY 2023, constituting eight percent of the overall digital marketing spend, according to the State of Digital Marketing in India report. Despite the popularity of affiliate marketing, the model presents its own challenges, such as onboarding and managing affiliates, high commission fees, and vulnerability to fraudulent and malicious practices.

During a discussion at DigiPlus Fest 2023, marketers explored the evolving landscape of affiliate marketing and strategies to optimise return on investment (RoI). The session featured Nishant Jaiswal, VP – marketing, Zupee; Sachin Vashishtha, chief marketing officer, Paisabazaar, and was chaired by Saumya Jain, ETBrandEquity.com.

Essentially, affiliate marketing involves incentivizing affiliates with a commission or payout to drive a business action, such as a click or purchase. The practice began with blogs, websites, and email but has since expanded to include social media and e-commerce platforms.

Vashishtha observed that while affiliate marketing was one of the most profitable and RoI-positive ways for online businesses to grow, it didn’t take long for bad actors to leverage it for fraud. Affiliates with malicious intent began generating traffic for brands using any means necessary to earn a commission.

The practice started losing its appeal until the explosion of the creator economy and the rise of influencers. Additionally, improvements in technology and the emergence of attribution models like multi-touch attribution or view-through attribution started bringing transparency into the affiliate marketing model.

Jaiswal remarked that affiliate marketing in India is still nascent compared to global platforms, where many end publishers are not directly accessible to advertisers. He said, “With technology, many fraud-related concerns like click hijacking, app install hijacking, and click spam can be controlled by your mobile measurement partner (MMP) or attribution partner.”

However, despite technological advancements, brands still run the risk of being visible in an unsafe environment due to the way affiliate marketing models are structured. While advertisers primarily engage with larger affiliate networks, campaigns might be outsourced to smaller publishers, networks, and individuals, making it challenging to map where conversions are coming from. Additionally, smaller publishers or creators may create clickbait content or reach out to irrelevant audiences simply to drive traffic or act with malicious intent, harming the brand’s reputation.

Vashishtha stated, “You can go back to the affiliate network and ban the publisher, but it is still very difficult to work with the ecosystem the way it is now. We prefer to work with large publishers or content creators directly.”

By working directly with publishers or creators, brands can see how content gets created and deployed to generate conversions. Jaiswal suggested that brands could share a high volume of assets with affiliates directly to test their effectiveness and ensure that the brand positioning and messaging remain consistent.

While it is not entirely avoidable to discourage malicious activity, Jaiswal opined that assigning realistic key performance indicators (KPIs) while designing the campaign can automatically rule out any fraud from the equation. He said, “Marketers could leverage a combination of hard KPIs and soft KPIs, where soft KPIs can be click-to-conversion rate, sign-up-to-purchase rate, and hard KPIs could be cost-to-purchase or cost-to-sign-up.”

Affiliate marketing has its fair share of challenges; however, the ecosystem is continuously evolving. With new technologies like AI, affiliate marketing initiatives will become sharper and more targeted.

  • Published On Dec 9, 2023 at 05:03 PM IST

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First, AI came for Sports Illustrated. Soon, it will want to give you sports betting advice

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First, AI came for Sports Illustrated. Soon, it will want to give you sports betting advice

Open this photo in gallery:

Real Sports Bar and Grill in Toronto on Nov. 24, 2016.Glenn Lowson/The Globe and Mail

When Sports Illustrated was outed last week for its alleged use of generative AI to create online articles – and, even worse, for topping them with fake bylines and AI author headshots – readers of the legendary glossy were appalled and disappointed at how the mighty had fallen.

But there was one element of the story that largely got lost amid the outrage, and it hints at an even darker prospect of what lies ahead for sports media and fans.

The SI pieces in question were product reviews: Inoffensive rankings of say, seven brands of volleyballs, which included links to Amazon that a reader could click on if they suddenly felt the urge to take up the sport. So, not only was the editorial copy generated by fake people, it was actually fake editorial copy. It was real advertising.

The practice of peppering editorial content with commercial links – known in the business as affiliate marketing – is a mainstay of Internet advertising, from movie reviews that direct readers to online ticketing sites, to podcasters and TikTok influencers giving out discount codes for listeners or viewers to buy merch from specific retailers.

But affiliate marketing has exploded in recent years in one notorious segment of the industry – sports betting, and its gush of ad dollars that are falling on a desperate media sector like rain on a parched prairie.

Affiliate sites that funnel new customers to online gambling operators are raking in the cash because of a quirk in that segment of the business – and they’re doing it on the backs of those new bettors.

In the spring of 2021, the Canadian sports media startup Playmaker Capital went public on the TSX Venture Exchange and quickly began scooping up digital properties with large followings that the company believed could be converted to bettors. When I interviewed Playmaker’s CEO, Jordan Gnat, shortly after shares began trading, he said he wanted to be in “the fan monetization business.”

There were tens of millions to monetize. The company began by buying soccer-focused sites in Latin America such as Bolavip, which targeted fans in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Central America and the United States, then expanded into the English-language North American market with the newsletter publisher and aggregator Yardbarker. Here in Canada it bought The Nation Network, which operates the hockey fantasy site, Daily Faceoff, and the Quebec-based La Poche Bleue.

But last month, Playmaker went from the hunter to the hunted when Better Collective, an affiliate-marketing giant based in Denmark that Gnat had cited to me as an inspiration for his company, gobbled it up for about $260-million.

The flurry of activity is partly because affiliate marketers who funnel customers to sportsbooks are an entirely different beast. They’re not just making one-time commissions, as they would if they were helping to sell concert tickets or tennis racquets or fly traps. Instead, they get a percentage of the sportsbook’s net revenue made from any new bettor.

“Net revenue” is another term for “total lifetime losses by a new bettor.”

Forget the pennies that digital ads are infamous for bringing in. If a site converts a reader or listener or viewer into a regular gambler – that is, a regular loser – the payday can be hundreds of dollars or more.

Here’s where it might occur to you that the incentives for a site to give you good betting advice might clash with that same site’s incentive to get you to sign up with a sports book and then lose a lot of money.

You would not be wrong.

In the social-media industry, there’s a saying that if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. In the world of affiliate marketing, you are the product – the one that’s being sold to the sportsbooks. But boy, are you paying for it.

An academic paper published in January, 2020, in International Gambling Studies titled Affiliate Marketing of Sports Betting – A Cause for Concern? points out that many sites aren’t transparent about their duelling allegiances. It also notes that “people assign greater levels of trust to expert advice during decision-making tasks involving financial risk. This may be a particular concern for those who are just beginning to gamble upon sport, as they may be more inclined to rely on expert advice on bet choice due to their lack of experience.” Newbies may be especially susceptible, given that affiliates position themselves as being on the side of the bettor, when in fact they’re being paid by the sportsbook.

Which brings us full circle back to where we started. Generative AI is notoriously bad at a lot of things, including getting facts straight. But it’s very good at sounding confident, even as it bluffs its way through life.

And it’s about to use its charms to lull you into thinking you can beat the house.

Last May, Lloyd Danzig, the managing partner at the New York-based venture-capital company Sharp Alpha Advisors, noted in a piece for Sports Business Journal that publishers doing affiliate marketing for sportsbooks, “will soon leverage generative AI to instantly create thousands of SEO-optimized articles that discuss the current day’s calendar of games, betting trends, stories to follow, and sportsbook promotions. Pregame previews, postgame summaries, and highlight reels can be created on command without the use of specialized software or manual oversight. Articles, sportsbook reviews, and odds comparison pieces can be generated for any audience, with a fraction of the effort required from human writers.”

Think we’re already swamped with sports betting content? You haven’t seen anything yet.

Après ChatGPT, le déluge.

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What Are the Duties of a Content Strategist?

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What Are the Duties of a Content Strategist?

You’ve decided you want a career as a content strategist, and we’re here to help you reach your goal. A content strategist is a key player in determining the success of a brand’s content strategy, and it can be an exciting career path.

We discuss below the duties of a content strategist along with tips for becoming the most successful one you can be.

What Does a Content Strategist Do?

A content strategist brainstorms, plans, and executes the content strategy for a brand. This can be done either in a solo environment or with a content strategy team.

The material that’s crafted by content strategists for various social media platforms and other digital marketing efforts is designed with the objectives of the business in mind.

Understanding what content strategists do means we first need to understand content marketing.

Content marketing is a useful type of marketing that involves creating content designed to build interest in a brand’s products or services without explicitly promoting them.

Content strategists are content marketing experts.

For example, a content marketing strategy for a social media coach could involve a series of blog posts about why it’s so important to post on social media.

content strategist

Now you can understand how a content marketing strategist engages in content marketing in the day-to-day execution of their job.

Content Strategist Job Description

Here is a sample content strategist job description:

The content strategist will develop a content strategy that meets key business objectives. They will reach the brand’s target audience through various marketing channels using their supreme content delivery skills.

The content strategist will use the organization’s content management system to oversee marketing campaigns across a variety of specific social media channels. In addition to content planning and content creation, content strategists will report on how their work met content strategy deliverables.

A typical content strategist salary ranges from $40,000-$80,000 based on location, experience, and the type of company you’re working for.

Here are a few examples of roles for the job title “content strategist” that illustrate a varying salary range based on location throughout the United States:

content strategistcontent strategist

As you gain more experience and rise in seniority, you could become a senior content strategist or even advance into marketing leadership. It’s up to you where you want to take your career.

The Roles and Responsibilities of a Content Strategist

To add to the content strategist job description, we list the roles and responsibilities of a content strategist below.

The content strategist role varies on a day-to-day basis, but the overall tasks that need to be completed remain consistent. Content strategists will:

  • Facilitate content planning sessions across a variety of editorial calendars and marketing channels.
  • Perform a content audit of all existing content, evaluate its effectiveness, and update as necessary.
  • Conduct extensive keyword research to guide the direction of the brand’s content creation.
  • Pitch existing and prospective clients on their content creation ideas.
  • Build target audience profiles to create content for.
  • Understand the many ways future content can generate leads and be monetized.
  • Stay informed on social media trends and changes in consumer behavior.
  • Create content across various digital platforms and social media accounts.
  • Oversee a marketing team and delegate tasks for ongoing and upcoming projects.
  • Collaborate with other team members, like copywriters, UX/UI designers, editors, and more when creating online content.
  • Analyze its successful content strategy and report back on its performance. A working knowledge of SEO reporting tools is crucial.

Who Does a Content Strategist Report To?

The content strategist will typically report to a manager in the marketing department. This could include a marketing manager, the vice president of marketing, or the marketing director.

However, keep in mind that every company is structured differently.

For example, a large corporation will be structured differently than a small start-up.

The content strategist role at a start-up might report directly to the CEO. Furthermore, a content strategist at a large corporation might report to the marketing manager.

Depending on how large the marketing team is, the content strategist might report to a more specialized person, like the digital content manager.

Understanding the marketing team structure of the company you want to apply for will help you understand where you fit in the organization.

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Types of Companies Content Strategists Work For

Because every type of company can benefit from having a content strategy team, there are a variety of companies a content strategist could work for.

A few types of companies a content strategist could work for include:

Large Corporations:

Major recognizable brands need content strategists to maintain their position in the market as thought leaders.

Marketing Agencies:

Marketing agencies provide a wide range of services, and content marketing is just one of those services. A content marketer will help marketing agencies create engaging content as part of overall content strategies for clients.

Small Start-ups:

Content strategists are an important part of the business for small start-ups because they help attract new and existing customers.

Having content monetization skills can be especially important for start-ups as they run lean in the early days.

Content Agencies:

Content agencies are similar to marketing agencies. However, they provide a more niche service that’s specific to content marketing.

These types of agencies will need to hire teams of content strategists to serve their clients’ content marketing needs.

Freelance:

There is another option that’s entirely different from the employers we’ve discussed on this list. That alternative is freelancing.

A career as a freelancer means that you will be self-employed and responsible for obtaining your own clients, delivering the project, and billing the client.

While there is potentially more money to be made as a freelancer, it does also come with more risk.

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What Skills Do You Need to Become a Content Strategist?

Becoming a successful content strategist requires a variety of soft skills and technical expertise. We break down the necessary skills in each category below.

Soft Skills

Here are a list of the soft skills you’ll need in your career as a content strategist:

Storytelling:

You will need to tell compelling stories to a variety of audiences as a content strategist. Whether it’s pitching ideas to clients or educating your audience, you will need to learn to relay information in an engaging way.

Creativity:

Ultimately, you’re creating content for your target audience to consume. This means that it needs to be engaging, exciting, and creative. Having creativity will help you put together the best content.

Communication:

As a content strategist, you are communicating every day. Whether it’s to your boss, other teams within the company, or your target audience, having top-notch communication skills will be very important.

Organization:

An aspiring content strategist needs to be very organized. They will be managing multiple campaigns simultaneously, so they need expert organizational skills to keep everything running smoothly.

Technical Skills

Beyond the very important soft skills you’ll need, there are a variety of technical skills that you’ll also need in your career as a content strategist.

Here are a few of them:

Writing:

Strong technical writing skills are one of the most important hard skills you’ll need. Being able to write high-quality long-form content will be a key component of your job.

Search Engine Optimization:

SEO is another one of the most important technical skills you will need to have in your career. You’ll need to understand how to perform keyword research with SEO research software, along with how to seamlessly incorporate these keywords into the text as part of the content creation process.

Social Media Platforms:

Having an understanding of the posting style of each of the different social media platforms will be helpful to your success as a content strategist.

Your long-form content will be shared with your audience in the form of social media campaigns. If you’re able to lend your knowledge when creating these campaigns, you will be able to provide more value for your team.

Monetization:

Part of the content strategist’s job is understanding how the content you’re creating can be monetized and earn your employer money.

Whether it’s incorporating banner ads or partnering with affiliates, you will need to be an expert in monetization methods for the content strategies you implement.

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Tips for Becoming a Content Strategist

You know the skills you need to develop and what the job description entails. Now it’s time to discuss tips for optimizing your career in content marketing. Read our top 5 tips for becoming a content strategist below.

Prioritize Your Education

You will need to have the knowledge if you want to earn a job as a content strategist. This means that prioritizing your education should be at the top of your list.

While this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have a bachelor’s degree, some employers might require you to have one. For example, if you want to work at a large corporation or a major brand where you work your way up to a leadership position, they might require a bachelor’s degree for those types of roles.

Examples of bachelor’s degrees that you could obtain include marketing, journalism, public relations, or communications.

Gain Professional Experience

After you’ve obtained the education, you want to add professional experience to your resume.

Professional experience can occur in many forms, including internships and paid positions. Learn from the other content strategists you’re working with as you contribute to content marketing campaigns.

Whether you’re working directly as a content strategist or something adjacent to this position, give it your best effort to learn as much as you can while also impressing your employer.

References from internships and entry-level jobs will be helpful to you in the future!

Start Networking

In addition to developing your skills, you’ll also want to start networking.

Networking with other professionals in the industry will be helpful for you when searching for jobs. Sometimes, jobs aren’t even posted on online job boards, and instead, companies ask for referrals from their existing employees.

Similarly, when employers are looking at a large stack of resumes, seeing a name they recognize makes the hiring process easier for them.

Also, remember that you’re networking with people of all experience levels, not just people who are more advanced than you in your career. The person that you’re taking a course with could one day be promoted to the marketing manager you’re applying to work for.

All this to say, conduct yourself professionally and courteously when networking.

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Show Your Expertise Through Personal Projects

Even if you haven’t obtained that internship or first job yet, you can showcase your expertise through your personal projects.

Starting your own blog site, YouTube channel or newsletter will help you develop skills and gain hands-on experience.

Working on your own projects requires you to develop a content strategy, create content, and grow your audience.

How long does it take to make money from a blog? You will be able to answer this question for future employers based on firsthand knowledge.

You can then tell future employers about your expertise and the success of your marketing campaigns.

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Always Continue Learning

Even though education was already a priority for you on your path toward being a content strategist, learning will always be important for furthering your career.

Whether it’s taking online courses, reading books, or listening to podcasts, find the learning method that feels right for you.

Courses are a great way to further your education as a content marketer. Here are two great courses to get you started:

The Affiliate Lab

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The Affiliate Lab is an expert source on creating content optimized for SEO. This course contains more than 100 hours of training on how to conduct keyword research, select your niche, rank in search results, and more.

If you’re looking to improve the SEO rankings of your content, this course is for you. Niche Pursuits readers receive an exclusive discount of $200 off The Affiliate Lab course here.

Project 24

If you want to learn how to drive real results, Project 24 is the course for you. This will help teach you how to create the best possible content for a blog site or YouTube channel.

Its 27 online courses will teach you how to create and monetize content that’s been optimized for SEO.

The end goal of this course is to teach you how to generate passive income from your content marketing efforts. Check out our Income School Review to learn more about Project 24 and its founders.

No matter which course you choose based on your goals, what’s important is that you’re expanding your knowledge base to create results-driven content.

Your Career as a Content Strategist

Whether you work for a fast-paced marketing agency or an exciting brand, your career in digital content creation is sure to be an exciting one. We wish you the best of luck in your career as a content strategist!



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