As more and more brands internalize the strategic aspects of content marketing, the past decade has seen the rise of the in-house content marketer and a list of abilities the most successful ones have.

What Is a Content Marketer?

Content marketers define themselves differently depending on whom they’re talking to. This is because content marketing is seen differently depending on where one is in an organization.

At its core, a good definition of a content marketer would be someone who plans, creates, and distributes high-quality contents on behalf of a brand. The underlying content marketing strategy serves the purposes of:

  • attracting and building an audience
  • keeping stakeholders (existing customers, prospects, etc.) engaged

You might have a lot more objectives for content marketing, but overall, all objectives should fall into one of the two items above.

What qualities do great content marketers share?

If you Google “content marketers strengths”, you will get list of important content marketing skills like project management, SEO basics, social media, copywriting, Google Analytics, email marketing, managing an editorial calendar but these only scratch the surface of the strategic implications a content marketer must tackle on a daily basis.

A great Content Marketing Institute article about 6 Exceptional Content Marketers outlined great abilities these award-winning content marketers share.

We picked a few and added the Toast touch to it. This is what we believe the ideal candidate should be able to do.

Want to get your content team up to speed on this? Organize a team workshop or one-on-one coaching with an expert of our team. You can also book Alexandre to come and speak at your event!

They create with a specific audience in mind

This one might seem easy to do, but it isn’t always the case. To be able to apply creativity and strategic thinking to a specific audience, you must have defined the audience(s) you want to reach and impact.

Most organizations do have personas and audience segments defined, but now enough actually use them properly when producing and publishing content.

Being able to drive content marketing teams in understanding and using the various segments and audiences you have in your organization is an important skill (if not the most important).

Not considering an audience basically means your content will try to please everyone, and that is NEVER a good idea.

They develop (and double-down on) successful models

Struggling to get performance out of your content? If your content team is living through content chaos on a daily basis, schedule a quick call with us to discuss Content strategy and content operations. We can help you get all your ducks in a row.

Content marketing is not easy. It is a constantly moving target, with audience behaviours and algorithms changing on a daily basis, new platforms popping up. It is a jungle out there.

But one thing is a key skill great content marketing managers have: building models of content creation and distribution, and then being able to go stronger and/or copy-and-paste these models to other contexts.

Not everything needs to always be new and fresh.

Audiences also like familiarity and if you can provide this to them, or if you see something work for an audience that might also work for another, then do so.

There’s no shame in reusing a successful approach.

They excel at leading change

Struggling to get content out the door? A good content strategy required good prodution partners. Discover our capabilities in video, audio and editorial-SEO content production.

Although you might want to double-down on successful endeavours, content marketing (or, well, marketing as a whole!) is an industry living in constant change.

Great content marketers are able to lead change in their teams. Making sure great new ideas rise and can be executed.

Anyone working in content marketing must be able to work through change and sometimes chaos. And a great leader is able to make sure everyone is as comfortable as possible through all this.

They know how to scale

Executing a successful content strategy is all about making sure content gets out there for your audiences to discover and engage with.

But a great content marketer goes beyond the basic “let’s produce and publish this piece of content” rhetoric.

They are able to see opportunities and are able to scale their content operation so that it will be able to benefit from these opportunities.

They plan ahead and know how their teams and partners will be able to go even further, without sinking the boat.

They are great communicators with higher management

A great content program cannot go anywhere if there isn’t proper buy-in at higher echelons.

Great content marketers are great communicators and are able to explain what they do, the objectives they are chasing and what the content they distribute impacts the organization at a strategic level.

Never underestimate the importance internal communication has in a successful content program.

We often focus a lot of our time on getting content out there and measuring its performance, but if you aren’t being supported by the organization itself, you are not building the strategic team you should be.

How to constantly improve as a content marketer?

This is a question we are often asked at Toast. This is the reason our executive team coaches the best content marketing managers out there. Our coaching approach focuses on the individual and not the content program itself. It focuses on getting the best of your content marketing skills, not only with your team, but with your entire organization. Book a quick meeting with us to learn more about our coaching program.