Content marketing has been embraced by businesses large and small. There’s far less of a need to buy media when you can create it yourself. Businesses are aware that if you have a website, a blog, a YouTube channel, a Twitter presence, a Facebook page or a host of other online offerings, then you’re as much (if not more) a publisher as you are an advertiser.

But strategizing, creating, assessing, disseminating, evaluating, and monetizing content doesn’t just happen by itself. Someone’s got to actually do it.

How do organizations determine who that someone is? There are certainly plenty of possible roles that can oversee, or play a role in, content marketing. Here are just a few of the most obvious examples:

• Chief Content Officer/ VP of Content
• Chief Marketing Officer
• Content/Editorial Director
• Community Director
• Blogger
• Social Media Director/Manager
• Copywriter
• Copy Editor
• Videographer (production, editing)
• Graphic designer
• Photographer
• Outside Consultant(s)
• PR Professional
• Everyone (or very nearly everyone)

“Everyone” Should Be Involved

Companies that really buy into content marketing are increasingly taking the “everyone” approach. They’re hiring people to be responsible for creating digital content because its worth has been solidly demonstrated, but they’re not the only ones participating.

The fact that “everyone” is involved speaks to a critical aspect of content marketing. Companies must create a culture of content in order to find stories, identify customer concerns, product issues, barriers to sales, extract testimonials and hundreds of other content types.

Content ideas don’t live in the marketing department. They’re more likely to be found on the showroom floor, in the call center, or in sales. Product designers are a source of content. So are suppliers. Companies that take content marketing seriously must invest shoe leather in their initiatives. Like good journalists, they go out and find stories and ideas.

Clearly, when the job is creating lots of content, it helps to have lots of contributors. Yet putting someone at the helm of those initiatives is critical  – as critical as putting an editor-in-chief in charge of everything published by a newspaper or magazine. Consistency, style, voice, adherence to mission, editorial judgment and ethics are just part of the role. (For a great job description, see this chief content officer job description.)

The role has come to be referred to as the chief content officer, though many people are put off by the term (how many C-level executives can a company realistically have?). Quibbling over the title isn’t the purpose here. Depending on the size and org chart, this person may be the head of content, SVP content, or whatever.

Please read the rest of this post on MarketingLand, where it originally published)