What You Need to Build Your Digital Dream Team

I've been on a crusade talking about how all organizations, no matter the size, need someone to fill the role of the Chief Content Officer (or VP of Content):

The Chief Content Officer (CCO) oversees all marketing content initiatives, both internal and external, across multiple platforms and formats to drive sales, engagement, retention, leads and positive customer behavior.

The CCO oversees the overall content marketing strategy, and this role is needed. But it's only the start.

Ahava Leibtag's new book, The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web, details 18 additional roles an organization needs to excel on the web, specific to our content. Why are these roles so critical? We can have all the technology in the world (and we do), but without the people to plan, create, publish, distribute and govern our content, we don't have a chance at making a real impact on our customers.

Important note: your people will wear many of these hats...meaning that you don't need 18 people on your team, but you do need to make sure these roles are covered by some individual.

Each role can be sorted under one of three major areas: customer advocates (fights for what the customer needs), publishing and distribution advocates (fights for the content management system) and business advocates (fights for the business goals). To be successful, we need parts of our talent focusing on all three of these areas at the same time.

Front End Roles

These roles focus on what the audience sees - the graphical interface (visual design) and the navigation.

• Content Strategists (How does the content look? Does the content facilitate interaction? Does it make sense to users?)
• Visual Designers(How does the site look? Does the design facilitate interaction?)
  
• Information Architects (How do the navigation and interactive elements look?)
• Content Creators: writers, photographers, videographers, graphic designers (Is the content doing what we want it to be doing?)
• Usability Professionals (Can people navigate throughout the site and find what they need?)
• CMS (content management system) Authors (Is the content publishing properly?)
• SEO (search engine optimization) Experts (Can the content be found on search engines?)
• Audience Engagement Strategists (Is the content being found in social circles?)
• Project Managers (Is the project on time and within budget?)
• Business Analysts (Is the project solving our business challenges?)
• Analytics Experts (Do the analytics show that our approach was correct and that the content is being engaged with properly?)

Back End Roles

These roles focus on the code and what makes the website run.

• Content Strategists (How is the content meta-tagged? It it behaving properly in all the different templates and on all our digital properties?)
• Information Architects (Does the structure support all the elements we need to include?)
• Developers (Is the code working properly?)
• CMS Authors (Are we publishing efficiently?)
• SEO Experts (Is the content meta-tagged with the right keywords, descriptions and linking?)
• Audience Engagement Strategists (Is it easy to share content?)
• Project Managers (Is everything operating properly?)

What should you do with these roles? Use the above as a checklist. What's important is that you have someone in your organization filling each role.

Like it or not, you are a publisher today, and we need to make sure we have the talent in place so that our content solves our overall marketing objectives.

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Are there additional roles that are needed in the organization that Ahava missed? Is there one role that's more important than the others?

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@JoePulizzi is founder of the Content Marketing Institute, which runs the industry's largest content marketing event, Content Marketing World. He is also overly passionate about the color orange. His third book, Epic Content Marketing, is now available.

Image courtesy of Ahava Leibtag

Header Image: Valentin Casarsa and Jamie Robinson / Getty Images