Content creators are expected to produce large volumes of high-quality, effective, and informative content. A typical content strategy might call for blog articles, white papers, case studies, ad copy, web copy, social media posts, videos, podcasts, and more—all of which have to align with the business’s marketing goals, brand identity, and values.
To achieve the quality, consistency, and creativity essential for marketing success, it’s not enough to have a team of talented creative individuals. Your team needs to work together as a coherent group. Each member must play their role and fulfill their responsibilities. But how can they if those roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined?
In this article, we explore creative team roles and responsibilities. You’ll learn:
- What creative team roles and responsibilities are
- Why defined roles are critical to a content team’s success
- How to define roles and responsibilities for your content team
We'll talk about how to find the best roles for your team members based on their skills and strengths, give them the right responsibilities, track their progress over time, and make any changes that are needed along the way.
What Are Roles and Responsibilities?
A job responsibility is a duty or activity a particular employee is expected to carry out. For example, a copywriter’s responsibilities might include writing ad copy, which can be further broken down into the tasks that make that possible: understanding the client’s needs, crafting effective copy, proofreading, etc.
Some of the roles on a typical content team might include:
- Content Strategist: Develops and implements a content strategy that aligns with the organization’s goals and objectives.
- Content Writer: Creates written content, such as blog posts, articles, and white papers.
- Content Editor: Reviews and edits written content for accuracy, clarity, and consistency.
- Graphic Designer: Creates visual elements such as images, infographics, and videos that support the written content.
- Videographer: Shoots and edits video content.
- Social Media Manager: Manages the organization’s social media channels and creates content that engages the target audience.
- SEO Specialist: Optimizes content for the search engines to improve rankings and increase organic traffic.
- Analytics Manager: Measures and analyzes content performance, identifying trends and providing insights to the team.
- Project Manager: Manages the content creation process, ensuring that projects are completed on time and within budget.
On smaller content teams, these roles might be combined in the job description of a single individual. The content strategist might also take on the content editor role. The SEO specialist might also be responsible for analytics.
On larger teams, one role might be shared between multiple employees. There may be a team of content writers who report to one or more content editors.
Why Define Content Team Roles and Responsibilities?
Roles and responsibilities help content teams work more efficiently and produce better results. Without defined roles, team members are unclear about who is responsible for what. If your team is confused, they will waste time and lack accountability.
Many creative people find a lack of structure frustrating, so you may experience higher employee turnover. That’s true even if individual team members are committed, productive employees. Even the most self-motivated creatives need a structure in order to work effectively.
Role definition also keeps creative professionals focused on their objectives, helping them to make faster progress towards collective goals. They gain a sense of purpose from knowing each role has specific responsibilities that need to be completed to achieve the team’s objectives.
Finally, setting up roles eliminates overlap or duplication of effort because it is clear who is responsible for different tasks. Outlining these expectations from the start facilitates collaboration and reduces miscommunication or misunderstanding that can hurt team productivity.
Defining Roles for Your Content Team
We’ve established why you should consider defining roles and responsibilities for your creative team. But what’s the best way to go about it? Every team and company is unique, so it’s not simply a matter of handing out roles from the list we suggested above.
If you have a team already established, it’s more effective to figure out how it works and then make tweaks where necessary to improve efficiency, clarity, and productivity. When developing roles and responsibilities, keep in mind that you will ultimately assign them to team members, so consider each person’s preferences and strengths.
Observe and Analyze Content Team Processes
It is essential to understand the dynamics of your content team before assigning roles and responsibilities. A thorough analysis of how each member contributes can provide insight into areas where there are gaps in productivity or efficiency.
When observing your team’s creative processes, pay close attention to how ideas are generated, discussed amongst members, and implemented into projects. Review existing documents that serve as guidelines for both individual workflow and team collaboration, such as weekly calendars or longstanding management goals.
Additionally, take note of what works well across all aspects of your teams’ workflows; it may be beneficial for certain roles to focus exclusively on providing support in those specific areas rather than having one person juggle many duties at once.
Understanding every member’s role allows them to have more control over their own workload while creating a sense of autonomy within the group dynamic, which ultimately leads to better results with less overall effort.
Create Roles Based on Your Team’s Needs
Examine the tasks that make up each step of the content creation process, from coming up with an idea to publishing and distributing it. List the activities associated with each task and consider how they can be combined into useful roles that reflect the real-world demands on your team.
You don’t have to split roles along conventional lines if there is an overriding reason not to. For example, if you don’t want one person to handle everything related to a certain area, such as keyword research or copywriting, break it down into smaller responsibilities and create roles that allow for more granular delegation.
When defining roles for your team, take into account both individual strengths as well as any existing gaps in skills or knowledge within the group. You may find that you need to create additional positions to fill all the roles—an indicator that someone on your team has too much on their plate.
Assign Responsibilities to Roles
It’s easy to get caught up in the process of role design and miss key responsibilities. Take another look at the activities, tasks, and outcomes for which your team is responsible. Doing so will help you find process gaps that hurt productivity and undermine the whole process. Delineate responsibilities and carefully consider which roles they belong to.
Discuss Roles with Your Team
When developing these roles and responsibilities, discuss them with your entire team before assigning anything. In fact, your team should be involved from the start. They know what their day-to-day looks like, and you are unlikely to have a complete understanding of everything they do.
Ask team members about their responsibilities, and when you have created a set of roles, ask them to pick holes in your plan. It’s better to find out you’ve missed something during the planning phase than several months down the line.
On the other hand, don’t let team members dictate roles and responsibilities. Just as you do not have complete insight into their activities, they lack your view of the activities of the team as a whole.
However, try to be open-minded; allow others to have their say since they might have creative ideas about how to best distribute resources or consolidate duties, which could ultimately lead to greater efficiency and productivity.
Assign Roles to Team Members
Assign roles to team members or hire new employees to fill roles the existing team can’t accommodate. For long-established teams, this can be a disruptive process—team members may not like new responsibilities, and they may resent having responsibilities removed.
In the long run, though, rationalizing roles and responsibilities should result in a happier and more productive team. Everyone will be aware of their responsibilities, and every responsibility will be assigned to a role.
Monitor Team Performance and Iterate
You’re unlikely to get everything right at first. There’s no substitute for real-world testing, and you may find that you have missed responsibilities or that workflows don’t function as you had envisioned. Perhaps the allocation of roles to team members doesn’t prove as successful as you might have hoped.
In the months following the reorganization, monitor team productivity and the quality of their output. Talk to team members to get their feedback. Be prepared to adjust roles and responsibilities as new information comes in.
Marq Helps Creative Teams Manage Roles and Responsibilities
Marq’s brand templating platform empowers creative teams to automate content production workflows and produce consistent branded content. We recognize the importance of roles and responsibilities for creative teams, so the Marq platform offers powerful creative team management features. Administrators can create user and group structures that reflect their organization and share assets, projects, templates, and folders with granular permissions. To find out more, request a free demo with a brand templating expert.
