What Does a Web Content Manager Do for a Company?
Web content managers are the marketing team members responsible for planning, organizing, creating, and publishing all the content for a team or business. If it sounds like an enormous responsibility, that’s because it is. They work closely with the sales team and company leadership to develop pieces that the audience finds valuable and drives leads, sales, and overall marketing success. But what does a web content manager do all day? In this article, we explore that question with topics like:
- What Does a Web Content Manager Do?
- Why Should Your Company Have a Web Content Manager?
- Is There a Difference Between a Web Content Manager and a Digital Content Manager?
- How Does CopyPress Help Web Content Managers?
What Does a Web Content Manager Do?
Web content managers wear many hats. Their primary duties involve overseeing, scheduling, and publishing content. But that’s not all they do. Some web content managers handle writing, strategy, or other aspects of marketing. People in this role expect to complete tasks like:
- Developing content ideas that align with a brand’s strategy and goals
- Researching content topics that address the wants and needs of the target audience
- Working with marketing and sales teams to develop content strategies
- Using metrics to measure and maximize audience engagement with content
- Developing an editorial calendar for content publication
- Promoting a consistent brand message across every piece of content and marketing channel
- Writing consistent marketing pieces for a variety of channels
- Proofreading and editing all written content from an internal writing team or freelancers
- Dedicating time to SEO activities and optimization from archived or outdated content
- Working with tools like content management systems (CMS) to write, publish, and track the performance of all content pieces
- Creating and selecting visual and dynamic content to accompany written pieces on all channels
Why Should Your Company Have a Web Content Manager?
Sometimes, especially when you’re just starting a company or you’re making internal changes, you might wonder how much middle management you really need. Couldn’t the writers do their own editing and publishing? Couldn’t they report directly to the head of marketing and cut out the middle level?
While this is possible, you need to consider if sacrificing someone who oversees everything for someone with a more specialized skills is your best choice. Here are a few reasons adding a web content manager to your team could benefit the goals of your overall marketing department:
Focusing on the Big Picture
The work writers and editors do is important. Without them, there wouldn’t be quality content to share. But writers, editors, social media moderators, and direct marketing specialists have a small portion of the picture to focus on. They do it well. But if all these roles operate independently and look out for their own piece, who’s watching the big picture?
That’s a job for the web content manager. They oversee all the smaller pieces that go into content publication and figure out how they fit together. They’re a perfect go-between for the strategists and the doers. Web content managers are involved in both phases of production. They give actionable feedback to writers and editors to incorporate in their content. But they also see how each smaller piece fits into the larger plan strategists develop.
Recognizing the Trends
A web content manager isn’t just knowledgeable about the marketing processes of their company. They also recognize trends across their industries. Part of their job is to read, research, and learn about current trends and topics within their marketing niches. They also analyze and determine how these trends relate to their brand.
Research and data are both vital in marketing because they help writers identify topic areas and ensure factually accurate, engaging content. What’s more, the data content managers research and collect supports strategists in the discovery of approaches to reach audiences and promote content.
Maximizing Your SEO Potential
An important aspect of a web content manager’s job is reviewing and optimizing writer work for SEO purposes. Looking at content with SEO in mind, they’ll copyedit and spruce it up to match search intent, keyword data, and other nuances to make content rank at the top of search results. According to Search Engine Journal, 49% of marketers report the best ROI comes from organic search. So optimization isn’t something to leave up to fate. Instead, get a web content manager that understands how to make SEO work for your company.
Keeping Things Organized
Your content manager takes on multiple responsibilities and works with a range of content tools. Keeping things organized between creative teams, QA analysts, and project managers is crucial to maintaining consistency, quality, and relevancy. Whether they’re organizing content between writers and editors within a shared document, updating project management style guides in a CMS, or establishing KPIs for their teams, web content managers keep everything organized throughout the content creation and delivery process.
Saving Time and Money
Streamlining the content production process is another challenge web content managers overcome. With content management in place, you can make sure creative teams, strategists, and analysts are aligned to overarching company goals. This coordination between different teams and even departments makes much of the content production process more efficient. And with higher efficiency comes higher productivity, also saving time and money.
Is There a Difference Between a Web Content Manager and a Digital Content Manager?
Image via Unsplash by @wocintechchat
It depends on who you ask if there’s a difference between a web content manager and a digital content manager. Typically, a content manager role includes a wide variety of responsibilities. At times, that position acts as a catch-all for overseeing the entire production process for marketing materials, even including those that happen offline. As you add adjectives and qualifiers to that basic role, the duties get more specific. For example, a social media content manager handles all phases of marketing content production, but only for social media platforms.
People often use the terms “digital” and “web” interchangeably for most job roles that take place online. This also applies to content managers. Web content managers usually take care of the publication process for online content marketing. They supervise channels like websites, blogs, knowledge base archives, and eBook libraries. These are all the places you’d expect to see publications online, traditionally.
Digital content managers often work more with eCommerce stores and websites to update new products and services or product descriptions. But this isn’t a guaranteed description of either job. In the end, someone in either role could take on any of these tasks, including those of a social media manager, and even other marketing responsibilities outside of publication. Luckily, most people who you’d consider hiring for either role have the skills to do both.
No matter what you call this type of job at your company, be sure you’re clear in your expectations in the job description so that the most qualified applicants know and understand the role for which they’re applying.
How Does CopyPress Help Web Content Managers?
Whether you’re a web content manager yourself, or you’re a company leader looking to support your team, CopyPress is a perfect solution. Our focus on services and strategy helps assist team members in this role with:
Dedicated Research
Research is integral to both writing and strategy. Data influences campaign decisions. Just as web content managers need to stay informed about their industries and brands, we expect our team to do the same. We can even help with this research using our software, Thematical. This program helps us compare your current content to top competitors, where you’ll find gaps that your content isn’t covering. Using this gap data, we help you plan a strategy that focuses on these areas so you can produce relevant content and reach target audiences.
You can learn all about how Thematical works by requesting your free content marketing analysis. This content analysis gives you a preview of some of the information you can gather through Thematical when working with our team.
“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”
Kevin Doory
Director of SEO at Auto Revo
Content Variety
Web content managers typically work with traditional publishing pieces in their everyday work. So does the CopyPress team. We can provide the exact types of content you need or expand your offerings with options like:
Articles
Long-form content articles are perfect for informational industry content. CopyPress develops pieces that increase your brand awareness online and provide value to your audience. With the right blend of fact and opinion, this content can help your brand become a thought leader in any industry.
At CopyPress, we work with clients around the globe and create content natively in a variety of languages. Whether you already published your work in national markets or you’re looking to expand to new ones, we help you do it. And best of all, you don’t have to hire additional writers or freelancers for your team, which can reduce the costs of managing your online content.
Blog Posts
Short-form blog posts are perfect for opinion content, vertical content topics, or company news. Let the CopyPress creatives develop your blog posts and save time and resources for your internal team. Our blog services include writing, editing, and quality assurance, all based on the style guide we help you develop for our creatives to follow. And during the entire process, we make sure to capture your brand voice and craft the right messages to reach your target audiences.
eBooks
Web content managers frequently oversee the production of eBook libraries for their brands. This type of content marketing is especially popular with companies that deal in direct marketing or lead generation. CopyPress helps you develop informational and eye-catching eBooks for any audience. We handle any aspect of production where you need help, or we can take the entire project from ideation to publication. Use them as lead magnets to encourage people to subscribe to your services.
Product Descriptions
Though product descriptions may fit better into the job duties of a digital content manager, web content managers may encounter them, too. If that role requires you to manage an eCommerce store or a set of service pages, you may be responsible for coming up with just the right hook to get people to buy.
CopyPress creates polished product descriptions to spark client interest and sales. We develop short-form content that highlights the unique features of what your company sells or offers to its clients. When done right, product descriptions also provide a better user experience for site visitors and eCommerce shoppers, ultimately resulting in more sales.
White Papers
Web content managers for B2B companies use white papers as a communication tool for their audiences. If you’re looking for a way to provide an in-depth report on the benefits of a product or service your company provides, white papers are the content to use.
Using long-form content with support from market data, white papers help establish companies as thought leaders in their industries. With CopyPress, share your unique selling proposition and brand benefits with our team. Through collaboration, we’ll help you determine the right topics for your white paper and hand-select the best team for the job.
Style Guide Design
Style guides ensure content remains consistent across all publishing channels. When collaborating with our clients, we devise a style guide that keeps consistency, relevancy, and tone in mind. Before we start your campaign, we’ll collaborate and set a style guide that supports your projects from ideation to publication. Using this document, our writers and creative teams keep every piece of content authentic to your brand.
Curated Team Selection
Whether you work with an internal team or with freelancers, managing a large staff has its challenges. With CopyPress, we help you overcome these challenges by curating a creative team exclusively for your projects. We work with a variety of talent, which allows us to pair your content with the right team of writers, editors, and QA specialists for your campaign to deliver the high-quality content you deserve.
Campaign Alignment
A unique feature of working with CopyPress is our campaign alignment phase. Before your campaign kickoff, we generate test pieces for your review. This gives you the power to determine if we’ve selected the right creatives and if we understand your goals and expectations. Use this time to update and edit your style guide to be as specific as possible in your expectations. This allows us to make sure we deliver content exactly to your liking once the campaign begins.
SEO as a Focus
SEO is the key to getting better positioning on SERPs. Web content managers take SEO seriously, and so does CopyPress. We put SEO at the focus of every piece we write and develop. With the help of Thematical, we study the data to identify what content your audience is searching for and prioritize SEO practices that will send it to the top of the SERPs.
Consistent Communication
Web content managers know what it’s like to be in constant communication with their teams every day. That doesn’t change when you work with CopyPress. We provide our clients with a dedicated client success manager, who serves as the primary point of contact for all your campaign updates and production questions. You’ll also have access to a client Slack channel personalized for your company to keep all your conversations in one place.
Publish-Ready Content
When it’s time to distribute content, our API options let you publish to a variety of online sources. You can also download a copy of the content in your desired file format to publish on another channel. This process gives you more freedom for delivering your content across multiple channels, further extending your reach.
Are you ready to get your web content managers the support they need to do their jobs well? CopyPress makes every phase of production, from ideation to publishing, easier for your team. With a variety of content to choose from and expertise in multiple industries and languages, we understand what you need from your content. Schedule your free introductory call with our team to see how your goals and CopyPress’s dedication align.
CopyPress writer
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