Let’s make a dream team. Because at the end of the day, success in the sports media industry is about teamwork. With a strong personal or organizational brand, you can make some headway, but it takes coordination, collaboration, and converging ideas to take your brand to the next level.
Depending on the size of your team, or the stage you’re at in your sports media journey, you may have some role overlap, or you may have to wear a couple different hats, at least. But if you’re aiming to break down your team needs based on the necessary specializations, here’s what you need – at the very least.
5 Steps to Assembling a Prolific Content Creation Team
1) Assign a Content Director Who Plans and Schedules
For any content creation team that has multiple people, there has to be some level of oversight and organization. All of the coordination has to flow from a certain point, or else the moving parts can lose synergy quickly. That’s where the content director comes in.
The content director takes a leading role in all of the organizational processes of the brand: Content planning, task distribution, scheduling, and reviewing goals. The content director serves as the compass, ensuring that time and resources are used efficiently at all levels.
2) Task a Trends Analyst With Knowing Your Audience Best
Because the sports media industry is so heavily defined by search intent and cultural trends in the modern age, having a trends analyst for both Google and social media can be invaluable. Your brand vision ultimately defines what kind of content you produce – but catching reader momentum at the right time is what spurs growth.
Purely on the writing side, you might seek a search engine optimization, or SEO specialist to help with this kind of work. On social media, with more ground to cover, it can be a collaborative approach. Nevertheless, with this role, you’re putting your finger on the pulse of the people, and ensuring you’re never a step behind.
3) Bring Ideas to Life With, or As, a Content Creator
Now we’ve reached the lifeblood of the content team: The content creators. These are the workers who bring the brand’s content ideas to life. In the sports media industry, they most often consist of writers, podcasters, and video producers, but graphic designers can fall into this category as well.
The primary function of a content creator is to produce, but the best content creators also understand trends, SEO, and what their audience needs and wants, and they can infuse that knowledge seamlessly into their works.
4) Collaborate With Content Editors Who Bring Out the Best
Once the content creators finish their first drafts, the work gets passed on to the content editors. The content creator’s job is to bring the idea to life. The content editor’s job is to bring about the best version of that idea. Written editors will trim, format, check grammar, and fine-tune SEO. Video editors might polish audio, cut clips, trim outtakes, and add graphic overlays.
The editor takes a lot of pressure off of the content creator’s shoulders simply by being another set of eyes. But more than that, the content editor has an eye for making the content the best it can be. And without spending too much effort on creating the content itself, the editor can focus on the fine details.
5) Entrust a Social Media Manager With Sharing and Engaging
Once the content is created and put through the editing process, it can then be released to the target audience through search engines and social media promotion. The social media manager serves as the end-cap of the content creation process – sharing that content with the audience at-large, promoting that content, and generating interest and engagement.
Because social media can be such a volatile environment, social media managers thrive when they’re able to effectively review post performance, experiment, and adapt as the situation demands. With that adaptability, a social media manager can effectively promote the work of the content team.
Playbook
- Content director plans and schedules
- Trends analysts tune into target audiences
- Content creators bring ideas to life
- Content editors bring about the best versions
- Social media managers share and engage with audience
