Hire for 4 Uncommon Content Marketing Roles

We connected with thought leaders to talk about their content marketing hiring wish lists. Here are four of the uncommon positions they have or would like to have on their teams.

Social journalist

Job summary: A traditional journalist who understands the art and science of building audiences online

Responsibilities:

1. Combine journalism skills, social-media-superstar status, and brand awareness to reach audiences where they live online

2. Create relevant content with brand context and a deep understanding of social distribution

Andrew Hanelly, creative director at Rev, says: “Usually, marketing job applicants emphasize the wrong details to an agency or brand. They focus on work experience, but what I get excited about are side projects. One amazing hire had a Tumblr (account); it was just a small note on his resume, but I found out he had about 100,000 followers, and I recruited him based on that.”

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Crowd developer

Job summary: Develop a crowd — a super focus group — of passionate customers, then use the group to generate marketing and product ideas

Responsibilities:

1. Create a private community to interact with, pose challenges and activities, and encourage new ways for them to share feedback and ideas

2. Invite crowds to in-person events and develop user-generated content projects

Lisa Bialecki, senior director of integrated communications at Rust-Oleum Group, says, “We want to use a crowd to help us make better, more relevant products. And as we learn more about our crowd, we’d like to come up with some really fun ways to work with them.”

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Growth hacker/data scientist

Job summary: These two related roles are for those who love tinkering with the science and mechanics of growth, and enjoy drawing insights from analytics and data

Responsibilities:

1. Experiment with landing-page optimization, perform email subject-line testing, find new communities to share content

2. Maximize the value of each engagement to put users on a path toward conversion

Hanelly says, “You don’t have to be a Ph.D. in math, but you need to understand how Google Analytics data can be cross-referenced with social-listening data, BuzzSumo data, and search data. We want to hire somebody who can take a look at all of these disparate data sources and then not just give a report, but deliver five sentences that say, “Here’s what we should do based on what I’m seeing.’”

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Visual storyteller

Job summary: Tell stories and repurpose content using visual media

Responsibilities:

1. Create original SlideShare presentations, infographics, and video content

2. Recycle blog content into visual formats

3. Add visual elements to existing content

Dusty DiMercurio, head of content marketing at AutoDesk, says, “We feel really fortunate to have cool stories to tell. Our customers are amazing and do amazing things; we can tell those stories much more quickly and succinctly with visuals. Part of what we’re imagining when we bring on a visual storyteller is somebody to scour through a lot of the existing content, and help recycle it and leverage it visually.”

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This article originally appeared in the June issue of Chief Content Officer. Sign up to receive your free subscription to our bimonthly print magazine.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute