To make the most of your content marketing efforts, you need a content strategist working behind the scenes to make sure everything is running smoothly. Although “content strategy” is a widely-used term, the field now is comprised of several types of sub-specialties.
In this series, we’re taking a look at the different types of content strategy roles and how they can benefit your business. Our first post covered the front-end content strategist’s role and responsibilities; now, let’s take a look at what back-end content strategists do.
What is a back-end content strategist?
In a nutshell, back-end content strategists focus on using technology to organize, manage, and make the most out of your content.
They make content models, develop systems to repurpose content, and offer advice about how you can use software to support your content needs. Unlike front-end content strategists, they think in terms of structure and technology – and use this knowledge to determine the best way to scale your content for the future.
How can a back-end strategist help your business?
Create content models
Back-end strategists build content models to improve the consistency of your content. This allows you to publish content across all of your channels in the same tone and voice.
They begin by looking at your business’s goals and creating a taxonomy (a classification system) that adheres to those goals.
The content model includes each content type your brand has produced (blog posts, images, web pages, etc.) and shows a relationship between those types of content. By creating a content model, a back-end strategist can see the motive behind all of your content and develop a logical structure for it.
Content models enhance the quality of your content, identify where you can repurpose certain pieces, and help you produce consistent content across web, mobile, and print.
Identify the best ways to repurpose content
Back-end strategists determine how to get the most out of your content investment by repurposing your content in a way that’s interesting and valuable to your customers.
For example, a back-end content strategist might suggest turning pieces from blog posts into infographics or videos to post on social media. They might also suggest taking listacles and turning them into a daily email series.
Reusing the high-quality content on your blog and website has endless benefits. It boosts your SEO, allows you to reach new customers, and shows your business as an authority in your industry.
Scale your content for long-term success
Another important aspect for back-end strategists is scaling your processes to ensure they keep performing in the future. One way they might do this is deciding how often to use evergreen content vs. time-sensitive content based on your content strategy. Unlike evergreen content that stays fresh year-round, time-sensitive content is only applicable for a short period of time (yet can drive major impact if done right). It’s important to have a healthy balance between these types of content to attract your target audience and convert them into customers.
A back-end content strategist could also suggest investing in well-researched, high-impact content like ebooks, whitepapers, or studies. These efforts create a mutual value exchange by helping you capture leads and grow your audience, in exchange for offering valuable content.
Lastly, back-end content strategists show you how to use certain tools to measure user engagement. By analyzing these metrics, you can see which types of content your audience enjoys and where to improve. Knowing these KPIs and using them to your advantage can help make your content future-proof.
Develop metadata for content storage and retrieval
Often, teams become stressed about having to track too many different moving parts, such as content history (when it was made, revised, repurposed) and where it came from (author, licensing rights for photos, etc). Back-end content strategists solve for this by developing metadata for the important information related to your content.
The implementation of metadata frees up your team from running through checklists and allows technology to take care of the small but significant details that can be a pain to manage. It also improves how the audience receives your content and can help you scale by keeping content organized and tagged appropriately.
Interested in hiring a back-end strategist to scale your content for success? Get in touch with us today to learn how we can help your business’s content thrive.