Test - What Is a Content Marketer, Anyway?Test - What Is a Content Marketer, Anyway?

Content marketers have long had an identity crisis.

In recent years, the crisis has grown with the ubiquity of content creators in the creator economy.

In truth, you know who you are in the workplace. But does your title reflect that? Does your job description? What happens when you do a job search? Or, if you’re hiring, how do you handle attracting content marketer candidates?

We posed those questions to the CMI community and, not surprisingly, discovered no one had THE answer. But their replies indicate the possibilities that the employed, job searchers, and employers need to consider. And they highlight a potentially big challenge in the long term.

Can a ‘content creator’ be a ‘content marketer’?

Let me explain how this conversation originated. In the last few years, the creator economy raised the profile of “content creators.” In that context, the term is meant to indicate people who create content to attract audiences but who may not qualify as or want to be known as an influencer.

For me, as a writer for the Content Marketing Institute, I have used the term “content creator” to describe marketers who create the content. I used it as a catch-all term for writers, graphic artists, photographers, videographers, etc., who worked in marketing.

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Marketer Roxanne Blanford had similar thinking. She explains, “Typically, the term ‘content marketer’ has been used to reference individuals who create, curate, and distribute content that attracts, educates, informs, and engages a target audience over a period of time, leading them through the funnel and building trust so that a purchasing consideration can take place and the sales team has a warm and highly interested lead to pursue.”

Fellow marketer Victoria Bishara de Leon says, “When I hear the title ‘content creator,’ I immediately think influencer,” she says.

But, Victoria explains, companies that hire content creators expect that person to not only build strategies for social but shoot the content, write the scripts, edit the content, and stay on top of trends. “It’s unreasonable and asking a person to be really good at way too many things,” she says.

Make a ‘word salad’ to describe what content marketers do

Roxanne says she’s adopted a word-salad approach in her job search. “We are all living in a world of SEO, keywords, buzzwords, and the like,” she says.

In her LinkedIn header, Roxanne includes “marketing and communications,” “marketing copywriter,” and “multichannel and omnichannel content writer” along with her purpose, “Enabling B2C/B2B market and customer connections.”

Roxanne ponders if a succinct role title is even possible, given the number of hats worn by a content marketer.

That’s why Roxanne purposely adopted the word-salad strategy, listing every type of content she can and has produced. “It enables me to better articulate a professional identity that is simultaneously specific and adaptable on a multichannel scale,” she says.

“With content writing and content management roles becoming increasingly multifaceted, communication professionals need to present descriptions that help navigate applicant tracking systems (ATS) when looking for work,” Roxanne says.

Test job title assumptions: Content marketing may be missing

Victoria started her job search looking for senior, director, and manager titles with the term “content marketing” in them. But she soon realized “content marketing” isn’t always in the title of a role that involves content marketing.

So, she expanded her search to include titles such as copywriter, web content manager, web content designer, and content lead.

“For the longest time, I equated copywriters with those who wrote short bits of copy with the intention of getting their audience to take almost immediate action,” she says.

I don’t think her understanding of a copywriter was wrong, but its practical application led to an expansion of the job description or perhaps organizations didn’t change the budget-approved title when they changed its duties.

Though she’s worn both copywriting and content hats in the same role, Victoria knows the skills are different. “It is challenging for an individual to regularly switch their brain back and forth between writing long-form content that tells a story through several paragraphs if not pages and writing short snippets of content meant to entice audiences into conversion,” she says.

How does a job candidate know what the role will entail without clear definitions? Victoria says don’t rely on the published job description alone. For example, she always asks if the team has a dedicated designer for marketing needs. If not, responsibility likely falls to another role.

“Ask as many questions as you can about the team and what the roles and responsibilities of those people entail,” Victoria says, suggesting reaching out to the future peers to ensure everything tracks.

Does the title matter?

Anna Wagner Schliep most recently had a marketing communications title where she owned the content for her area of the organization. (The company didn’t have a content marketing role, though it did have a content strategist who did SEO.)

In her current job search for content and communications work, she primarily looks at two titles — communications manager and content marketing manager. But many other titles may fit.

On her resume, she emphasizes in the headline and bullets her content and “owned” content experience. “So far, that approach doesn’t seem to be delivering for content marketing manager titles,” Anna says. “Perhaps that’s because the content marketing space is so crowded that if I haven’t had that title, it doesn’t matter.”

But, she says, the strategy does work OK for roles focused on communications with a marketing element.

Anna’s wish? Employers would be open to candidates with different titles on their resume and be clear in what the business seeks from the role. For example, “Do they want a social content creator or someone who’s looking at bigger picture messaging and development,” she asks.

Switch up titles to assess the applicant pool

At AdDaptive Intelligence, Laura Goldstone has tested a few titles when searching for someone to fill their content marketing coordinator/specialist roles.

She discarded a lot of “content creator” applications from people who were social media influencers or ran social media accounts but had never worked in marketing or weren’t qualified for the more strategic, holistic, full-funnel content marketing contribution they sought.

“I do think ‘content creator’ being used in the creator economy/social media influencer realm has muddied the waters a bit when it comes to hiring for traditional content marketing roles,” Laura says.

When the company posted a “content marketing specialist” role, applications came from all age groups, from entry-level to experienced in general and niche marketing.

But when it sought a “content marketing coordinator,” the candidate pool was more consistent — applicants typically in earlier phases of their career who had some experience writing and promoting.

Laura understands the challenges of using titles that accurately reflect the role. Her title is senior director of communications and branding strategy / head of brand and content.

“It’s a mouthful because a more concise title didn’t seem to do justice to the wide range of responsibilities I have,” she says.

The AdDaptive Intelligence marketing department is split into brand and demand. All the content comes from the brand team, which she oversees, along with messaging and design. The communications component of her title indicates to internal stakeholders her broader scope of responsibility. (The company’s content team reports to the head of communications.)

Giving proper perspective

Marion Abrams, director of content at Dartmouth Health, says she sees the challenge in using the term “content.”

One version is old school, referencing everything written on a website and the site’s SEO, structure, and information architecture. The more modern version encompasses social media, videos, emails, podcasts, and articles.

“And both are 100% sure that what they mean is obvious,” Marion says. “It causes a lot of confusion.”

That’s in part why Dartmouth Health strives to solve the problem by adding descriptors when using the term “content,” and that includes their current work of writing job descriptions.

Knowing what is and is not

Lee Densmer, owner and content marketing strategist of Globia Content Marketing, says being precise should be a must. “A content creator is not a content marketer. Also, a social media manager is not a content marketer. Also, an SEO writer is not a content marketer,” she says.

Though an SEO writer or social media person can become a content marketer, it shouldn’t be expected, and none of those people is automatically a content strategist.

While she recognizes few, if any, companies can budget for all those roles, they should invest in a strategic role first, perhaps a fractional content marketing strategist, and then add practitioners. To help, she has crafted a handbook for hiring a content marketing team that provides eight roles, including job descriptions and pay rates.

Making this differentiation

Jason Patterson, founder of Jewel Content Marketing Agency, views a content marketer as someone who has one foot in content and one foot in marketing. If someone does content in a branded newsroom, not marketing, they are brand journalists or something similar.

“The key point to remember is that these people are often in corporate marketing or brand-level teams and not product marketing,” Jason says.

As for clients, the terminology doesn’t matter. “Most clients … have things they want done and pay us to do them. Regardless of whether they’re right about what content marketing is or should be,” he says.

Expanding duties

Michelle Garrett, founder of Garrett Public Relations, says she’s observed content marketing duties being added into job descriptions for public relations and social media roles. “There is a lot of overlap and confusion about who should be responsible for what,” she says.

As some of the skills overlap, human resources and hiring managers may not understand how to capture that in a title and job description. Or perhaps it’s because the company wants one person to do all those things, Michelle says.

“While I understand that it might be beneficial to hire someone who has different skills, that shouldn’t make it OK to expect one person to take on too many responsibilities,” she says.

“I think the days of the specialist may be behind us, unfortunately.”

Recognizing long-term impact of muddled titles and roles

Jeremy Bednarski, senior manager of content strategy at Salesforce, says he sees a long-term impact of confusing and inconsistent job titles.

“What’s the next title and/or set of responsibilities when you get promoted? What’s the career path when there’s not much consistency in roles among companies?” he asks.

AdDaptive’s Laura Goldstone sees it as problematic, too. “Through 15-plus years, I haven’t seen one clear answer emerge as the obvious winner or most data-backed trend (for title names.)

“It’s confusing when it comes to career pathing — both for myself and for the team members I lead. But I try to view it as being empowering since we have a bit more autonomy and flexibility when it comes to creating roles — from title to scope — that match the breadth of work we produce"

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