Ali ShahdoostI am not only the content manager here at LanGeek, I am also the CEO, accountant, digital marketing manager and product manager. It is not something to brag about. To be honest we have no other choice; In a relatively small bootstrap startup like ours, we try to get the best of every position and every employee, and some positions are not big enough to have a dedicated person assigned to them, so the only choice is to assign them to the co-founder with the most experience in the field, and that is me.
But if I were to choose only one of these positions, I would probably go with the content manager; not only because I like it the most, but also because I am relatively good at it. It is important to mention that I did not study content or anything related to content in the university and my methods come from personal research and experience. Here is a list of things I do as the content manager.
Reading and watching
I read a lot (at least an hour a day). mostly related to my field of work which is languages and linguistics. I also like watching videos a lot and there is not a better place for it than YouTube. When I’m looking for a very detailed piece of information reading is usually a better choice. I also notice the choice of words in each text or article that I read, which helps me in my own writing. Because my expertise is in written content. I focus more on the way content is made when it is written than when it is a video or podcast.
Writing
I try to write but nowadays I don’t get to do it as much as I used to or want to. I used to write my own content. now my colleagues do it and I only get to read and edit it. One of the reasons I started this blog was to write more, especially in English because I felt like my writing skill is getting rusty.
Of course I write more about languages but I also try to write about my hobbies, thoughts and interests, this way I don’t lose my ability to be more creative in my writings.
Planning
Planning content is most of what I do now. We usually make a series of related content about a language and it needs a lot of planning. Before we start writing anything we spend a few days to weeks and make a sketch of all the content that is supposed to be produced. This way we don’t miss on important topics and also do not repeat something more than once in each article.
“Content integrity” is something I care about a lot. The reader should not feel like two pieces of content were written by two different writers. If there is a signature or style in someone’s writing we either eliminate it or if its good expand it to the whole team. There is a lot to say about content planning, I may write another post about it in the future.
Supervising
Every type of execution needs supervision. Supervising a team is a very time-consuming and also necessary process. About six month ago I assigned two of my more experienced colleagues to supervise most of the content made in our team. So far they are doing a better job than me (I am a bit lousy in this part). I still supervise the important parts and from time to time check on my colleagues to see if they are checking everything written in the team.
The hardest part of multilevel supervision is that other supervisors should have the exact vision of the whole plan so they can make the write choice. I spend some time weekly and explain plans to my colleagues to increase vision integrity of our team.
Last words
If you like reading and writing, content management will not be a difficult job for you. but gaining these skills will be very vital to your jobs:
- SEO and basics of digital marketing
- Team management
- Strategic planning
With these skills you can make an excellent content manager.
* Image from https://unsplash.com
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