Hiring a Content Manager? Here's What You Can't Afford to Overlook [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 69]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

Allison Riggs
0:00:00
If you're a business owner or an organization that is bringing endless customers and they ask you answer into your culture and into your teams, and there are three mistakes that you need to avoid when hiring your very first hire, the content manager.

Alex Winter
0:00:24
Join us for Impact Live 2024 in Hartford, Connecticut, this October 14th through the 16th. Over three days, business owners, CEOs, and marketing and sales leaders will learn proven strategies to drive business growth. Attend expert-led sessions on marketing, sales, leadership,

Alex Winter
0:00:42
and AI, and get a chance to network with industry pros just like yourself. Discover how companies like yours are dominating their markets. Secure your spot at impactplus.com backslash impact-5. And for all of our Endless Customers listeners,

Alex Winter
0:00:58
we have an exclusive discount code that'll save you a hundred bucks. So when you're on the checkout page, just enter the code ECPOD100 in all caps for $100 off. We'll see you there at Impact Live 2024 up in Hartford, October 14th through the 16th.

Alex Winter
0:01:13
Welcome back to Endless Customers, the show that teaches you how to earn trust and win more business in the age of AI. I'm your host, Alex Winter, and today we are joined by Allison Rigg. She's a head coach here at Impact.

Alex Winter
0:01:25
Allison, welcome back to the show.

Allison Riggs
0:01:27
Hey, always glad to be here, Alex.

Alex Winter
0:01:29
We're always glad to have you here. I can't wait to pick your brain. We have a really great topic today. I think it's pretty fair to say that for our Endless Customers and They Ask, You Answer community,

Alex Winter
0:01:37
we know how important it is to have a content manager and the reasons behind why you should have one. But I wanna talk a little bit about some mistakes that people and businesses may make when they're trying to hire a content manager because even though you may get the concept

Alex Winter
0:01:51
and like the idea of it and you're bought into it, that doesn't mean it always just goes swimmingly. So can we talk a little bit about your experiences because you help a lot of businesses with this as far as mistakes and things to look out for and just like the do's and don'ts of when you're hiring

Alex Winter
0:02:06
a content manager?

Allison Riggs
0:02:07
Yeah, well you make a really great point, Alex, because content really is at the core of Endless Customers and They Ask, You Answer. And it's not just the written content, it is the whole content strategy. And that is why it's so important for a content manager to be so in tune with the they ask you answer

Allison Riggs
0:02:29
endless customers strategy, but also with the company and the business's strategy as well. And so it is a unique skill set. And there are definitely a lot of aspects that can be coached and trained and learned, but there are also some, you know, soft skill pieces that we really want clients to look for when they're hiring content managers.

Allison Riggs
0:02:52
Because they're not, which is the one thing I remind people all the time, that word manager, like the title manager, a lot of times folks are like, well, they're managing people. And it's like, no, they're managing the strategy. And that's why it's so important to get that right hire

Allison Riggs
0:03:06
in the door the first time.

Alex Winter
0:03:08
That's a good point too, because I default to thinking that managers manage people. That's the definition technically. But a lot of times for businesses, especially small to medium sized businesses that are starting out on their endless customer's journey, this is the first hire. So they're not technically managing people, they're really managing exactly

Alex Winter
0:03:25
what you said, the strategy. So how does that play out as far as like you hire somebody on, the manager part is in their title, and they're maybe expecting to manage people, but like how does that play out and what have you seen like on the streets and in the field as you help companies do this?

Allison Riggs
0:03:41
Yeah, well, I think we talked about it before, endless customers and they ask you answer in the hiring and recruiting process. Yes. And that is a big piece of this as well, is how open and transparent and honest are we

Allison Riggs
0:03:55
in the hiring process? And that's where in the job description, in the actual interviews themselves, we are really hitting home consistently that this is managing the strategy and the importance of this role.

Allison Riggs
0:04:14
And not to freak people out, right? Like not to put so much pressure on them that it's, oh, this is such a hard position. It really is just to emphasize how important the content strategy is for an organization. It's not just the SEO side of creating content.

Allison Riggs
0:04:32
There is the assignment selling and the sales enablement content side of this. There's how you're building trust in your language and messaging on your website. The content manager truly is the person that owns that voice and builds that voice for the organization.

Allison Riggs
0:04:51
Of course, alongside leadership and the executive team, they're not going out on their own in robe, but it's really important in the hiring process to explain what managing the content strategy truly looks like and helping people understand from the beginning that this is a really important role and a foundational piece of bringing to life the They Ask, You

Allison Riggs
0:05:18
Answer endless customers framework and journey and culture into an organization.

Alex Winter
0:05:24
That's very well said. I totally agree. And I also think too that it's a, from what you're saying, it's an important hire. So you're saying no pressure, but there is a little bit of pressure. So for business owners and for leadership, what should they be looking for and making sure that this hire is the right choice and is going to be a long-term choice and hopefully get it right the first time?

Allison Riggs
0:05:44
Yeah, and you know, being fully transparent and all of the clients that I've worked with and experiencing this myself working in an organization that brought They Ask, You Answer as a framework, a lot of times, because companies as a whole and executive teams, right, they read the book and they hear Marcus speak and they are so incredibly excited about bringing in a content manager

Allison Riggs
0:06:11
because of its importance and how much that role matters. And so sometimes I'll see clients rush through this hiring process just to get someone in the door because they wanna start writing content and they wanna start using it and they wanna update their website

Allison Riggs
0:06:29
and they are really running through this process versus really slowing down and finding the right hire the first time so that they can speed up as quickly as possible once that content manager has their feet on the ground. So in the hiring process, you know,

Allison Riggs
0:06:52
there is a part of this where, you know, and like I said, full transparency, that's why we're here, building trust, you know. At Impact, we help businesses hire content managers. And so this isn't just from experience, like, you know, with companies DIYing it

Allison Riggs
0:07:10
or going through it, but we really sit with clients and help them understand the importance of this role and the things they should be looking for in the hiring process. And so the biggest pieces of bringing somebody in really are to slow down.

Allison Riggs
0:07:25
We have a content manager hiring playbook that we send to any clients that are starting their journey and looking to do this hire. And they're like, wow, Alison, there's like six or seven steps in here. And why is it such a robust hiring process?

Alex Winter
0:07:40
Yeah, I'm ready to go right now, Allison. Why do I have to do these steps? Let's go.

Allison Riggs
0:07:44
Yeah, right?

Allison Riggs
0:07:45
Like, what, are you gonna interview them three or four times? And well, I wanna go back to the organization soon. Like, well, what is your hiring process internally? Do you hire after the first interview? Like, what is a part of your culture

Allison Riggs
0:07:57
that you wanna ingrain? Because those are the two pieces. Make sure that you're bringing in your culture, that you're bringing in your hiring process alongside the they ask you answer proven hiring process. Which, I know you asked about characteristics,

Allison Riggs
0:08:13
and I promise I'm getting there.

Allison Riggs
0:08:15
But-

Alex Winter
0:08:16
No, this is great.

Alex Winter
0:08:17
That's a good point too, that the excitement factor, that's a positive thing, that's great. If you're bought into it, it's like that's the dream scenario or dream situation. But sometimes you go too fast

Alex Winter
0:08:27
and then you might end up making mistakes or not hiring the right person. And then we know what the cost of hiring the wrong person is. It's double the work to go back and then have to find somebody else. So you really want to try to get this right, and I think slowing down to speed up is a really important factor.

Allison Riggs
0:08:41
Well, and that, Alex, when you say making mistakes or rushing through the process, is a lot of times bringing in endless customers to an organization, it's a cultural change. It's new to the sales team, it's new to the marketing team, it's new to your operations team, your leadership team. And I've seen when people rush through the hiring process and they bring in the wrong hire, that buy-in with the organization, let's say on a scale of one to 10 when they first started, everyone's at eight, nine, 10, they're so excited and they're like a sales team members are like,

Allison Riggs
0:09:16
yes, I love this. I'm so excited. Let's go. Great content.

Alex Winter
0:09:20
Sure.

Allison Riggs
0:09:21
And can you get someone in the wrong role of the content manager who is really supposed to be leading the charge and leading that strategy and you can feel the effects in the other departments and not to make it sound overly dramatic, but you know, as you're doing this and getting people bought in and excited, when you bring in someone who's really not ready or doesn't have that soft skills piece of bringing people together, getting excited about content, writing really great content, and then helping people

Allison Riggs
0:09:56
implement and use that content, it can somewhat affect and slow down your journey in its customers. And so, the hiring process piece is important to not skip the steps. And so, the very first thing is, when you look at resumes and you're bringing this role in, is really start off looking for people that have a love for writing, right? This isn't the type of role that you need, like a marketing coordinator or a marketing manager,

Allison Riggs
0:10:33
where they're like, well, I know paid, and I know social media, and I know all of these little things, and I can dabble, and I'm a jack of all trades. Really at the heart of it is if they love writing, and they love storytelling, and they really understand that we're here to build trust and transparency and really leaning into that, that's one of the biggest things that we look for.

Allison Riggs
0:10:57
Because we need to blend quality writing with a pretty high quantity, right? So the quality and the quantity has to be there. And we find that when people are really passionate about writing specifically, I can teach you social media, I can teach you email marketing, I can teach you paid ads, I can teach you all of those things. But if you don't like spending 10 to 15 hours a week

Allison Riggs
0:11:24
sitting and writing, whether it's blog articles, whether it's website copy, whether it is the email marketing and the social media pieces, this isn't gonna be a good fit for you. They're gonna burn out, they're not gonna enjoy the role, you're not gonna hit the quality or that quantity

Allison Riggs
0:11:40
that we really need to see in order for this role to be successful. So, that love of writing and storytelling is so incredibly important.

Alex Winter
0:11:50
So important, I think that's at the core, when you start talking about social media and all the different delivery methods, those are just delivery methods at the basis of everything is still the content. And if you don't have good content,

Alex Winter
0:12:01
someone that's passionate about that, and also someone that's able to bridge the gaps between your sales team and pulling these stories out and finding these stories and cultivating these relationships and getting people to feel comfortable, those are big pieces that have to happen

Alex Winter
0:12:14
in order for this to work. Because you're right, the volume of content, the amount of content that has to go out to be successful, it's a lot.

Allison Riggs
0:12:21
It is and you make a great point and I love that you bring this up that they really do bring this framework to life within the organization, but they're also the coordinator of it, right? Your sickness teams, your operations teams, those are your subject matter experts. So they need to be interviewing them.

Allison Riggs
0:12:39
They need to be taking all of those stories and turning them into really great content, case studies, e-books, you know, different types of downloads and checklists, they need to extract that from other team members within your organization. And so having great interviewing skills and being able to turn that into really great content is another really great key piece of bringing in that right hire. And so that's even where, Alex, a part of our suggested hiring process is to do a almost like mock interview, not even really mock.

Allison Riggs
0:13:18
We call it a situational activity where we want to see them interview. We actually want them to, as a part of the hiring process, interview one of your team members, whether it's a leadership team member or a sales team member. We want to see how they will perform in the role ahead of time. So that means, do conduct that interview and then have them write a potential article, between 600 to 900 words,

Allison Riggs
0:13:45
but we want to see them extract that information, turn it into an article that we really can see their writing skills and ability. Also, guess what? I can check to see if you copied and pasted from AI. There's plenty of them, right? So it really gives us a great gauge of how this person will perform in the role before they actually set foot in your office, or if they're remote,

Allison Riggs
0:14:15
actually stepping into the position with your company. So taking some of those qualities of loving to write, loving to tell a story, loving interviewing, having a maturity and the ability to step up and build a strategy and execute a strategy and bring people together, coupled with we actually wanna see them write

Allison Riggs
0:14:39
and not just a writing sample, right? There's a difference between a writing sample versus interviewing one of your team members and producing a piece of content based on that interview.

Alex Winter
0:14:51
Absolutely. I love the idea of a situational activity. I think it's so important. I think a lot of what you've outlined, those are really like the checklist for people out there that are looking for a content manager. You need to check these boxes.

Alex Winter
0:15:03
And it's not impossible to find. I know it may sound a little daunting, but there are a lot of people out there that are great writers and that really want to take this on. And I think there's a lot of writers out there that never have had the freedom and responsibility to be able to like leverage their skills in this way. So you just have to look for those people that really have the tenacity and the willingness

Alex Winter
0:15:20
to do this and then obviously the skill set as well. So as you're going through the process, right, this just has me thinking and I'm going a little off script here, but I'm curious, what happens if like you get to situational activity, you conduct this activity and it doesn't go well? Or like maybe at some point in the process you're starting to see like some holes or some gaps in what you really need

Alex Winter
0:15:41
for this position and then like what should people do in those situations?

Allison Riggs
0:15:44
You know, there's a reason why you have a hiring process. There's a reason why we do the situational activity. There's a reason why we have so many steps and it's to find those gaps. It's to find those potential green flags, orange flags, and red flags, and really identify if those flags are fixable, coachable, or if they are just non-negotiables for this role.

Allison Riggs
0:16:18
And some of the non-negotiables for the role are poor writing. If it is just a poor piece of content, if we can tell that it was copied and pasted from AI, if it doesn't have that human component, Marcus talks a lot about that, right? Is you can use AI, but still bring in the human component to your writing.

Allison Riggs
0:16:39
And so we can see that right off of the bat, right? If they don't meet the time requirements, if they don't meet the number of word count that we're looking for, if the person that they interview flat out says, I don't think that they're a good fit, I don't see them meshing well with our sales team, if they're a culture fit, that is hard to fix. Really poor writing and poor culture fit are really hard things to fix. Some of the things that are fixable in the hiring process

Allison Riggs
0:17:14
are if it's not perfect SEO quality, but we can see that there are good bones to the writing. If they really captured how your company communicates and there's voice there and there's personality, that is more important to me. And then if the interview is well-researched

Allison Riggs
0:17:35
and there's really great questions. And the team is like, wow, I could feel the drive and the passion, I can work with that. Companies can work with drive and passion as long as there's middle ground writing skills.

Alex Winter
0:17:53
No, totally.

Allison Riggs
0:17:54
And culture fits, right? But I will, it's actually funny, Alex, and I think we've talked about this before, but I was a butcher in college and I also, somewhat called the butcher here at Impact and that's because I have some of the highest standards for our content managers.

Allison Riggs
0:18:15
I will, especially in the hiring process, cut people out faster than I will move people forward. Because I've seen so many times where we think we can fit somebody in the mold and we think we can teach them things or they're not coachable. Like if they're not coachable and they don't want to learn

Allison Riggs
0:18:35
and they don't want to grow, those are types of non-negotiables to me that says, let's keep looking.

Allison Riggs
0:18:42
Right?

Alex Winter
0:18:42
That's a great point.

Allison Riggs
0:18:44
Keep them in the pipeline. You can even keep them in the pipeline, but keep looking for other people. Because this is so important, and companies are investing a lot of money and time and energy into bringing this new framework to life. Why would we settle?

Allison Riggs
0:18:58
Right?

Allison Riggs
0:18:59
And especially when we know that there are a lot of really great candidates out there and a lot of really great entry level folks that will do what it takes in order to really make this come to life within an organization. And so I am much more of a slow to hire,

Allison Riggs
0:19:20
quick to kick out of the process or quick to fire kind of person because you don't wanna get six months down the road and feel like you have to start from scratch all over again. That is, that's tough for the content strategy, it's tough for the team, it's tough for morale,

Allison Riggs
0:19:39
and so really just sitting in the fact of is this person truly the right fit for our company and truly the right fit for this role? Sit in that and then make the best decision moving forward.

Alex Winter
0:19:54
Great advice, that's really great advice and I totally agree, I've had to hire quite a few people in the past and in previous engagements and the truth is the soft skills and the culture fit and the energy they bring is I would say more important than the technical skills. And do they need to have technical skills? Of course they do. Yes, we're not saying that they shouldn't. But those are

Alex Winter
0:20:14
things that you can coach and train and help hone and dial in. But being able to bridge those gaps with your team, trying to champion these new ideas as you're shifting into this new culture, like that's the most important piece. So I think that's really a great point that you make. And so once you do find this person, let's say you checked all the boxes, you finally have a content manager that like, yes, this is the person. What happens next?

Alex Winter
0:20:36
How does that flow into, all right, now you're working here, you're part of the company, you're our content manager. What does success look like as far as they integrate and start to take those first steps into their endless customer's journey?

Alex Winter
0:20:48
journey.

Allison Riggs
0:20:49
Yeah, I love this question, Alex, because we get it a lot, where, what is the balance between when they start and how quickly we should be publishing content and how quickly we should be getting them, you know,

Alex Winter
0:21:01
Well, right, because I'm thinking of these business owners that are like, I want to go, I want to go. So like, it takes time to hire, you get the hire, like, and now when can they start to expect to see these, like, distraction that they're looking for?

Allison Riggs
0:21:12
Yeah, well, Alex, you know me well, and I think a lot of people, my clients especially know me too, is yeah, go, go, go, the butcher, is because if you're going to slow down in the hiring process, then I expect to have a content manager's feet hit the ground and hit the ground running. So when I talk about coaches in the hiring process with impact clients specifically, is I actually sit in on interviews and conduct interviews with content managers before they're hiring and one of the

Allison Riggs
0:21:43
Every single time a hundred percent of the time I will tell them you are stepping onto a treadmill that is already running Right great analogy. Yeah, okay, and here's the thing too for Whether you're working with an impact coach or not You don't have to wait until you have a content manager to start your content strategy. You should still be doing big five content brainstorms. You should still be talking

Allison Riggs
0:22:07
through the content creation process. You should still be thinking about how you can interview folks, right? You can still be mapping out your sales journey and what type of content falls into that sales journey. And so I bring this up

Allison Riggs
0:22:20
because if you do that in the beginning, if you see this as not just reliant on the hire of the content manager. When that content manager starts, they already have topics to create, they already know subject matter experts

Allison Riggs
0:22:37
because we've already planned for it, and they can help mold and maybe reprioritize or reposition some of the content ideas that we have. But my expectation is that very first week, they are doing at least one interview and drafting at least one article. There is no reason, Alex, this is where my harshness comes in, right?

Allison Riggs
0:23:00
People are like, oh my gosh, but really, in my opinion, in my experience, there's no reason that a content manager can't step in that very first week and conduct an interview and write at least one article, if not two articles.

Alex Winter
0:23:17
Totally, especially if they've done the situational activity during the hiring process, they should already know and the expectation should be set that they're jumping onto this treadmill that's already moving. And I love that analogy, because I'm just picturing people jumping on

Alex Winter
0:23:29
and then flying into the wall that aren't ready for it. So you don't want that to happen. You gotta be ready to jump on there and run.

Allison Riggs
0:23:35
Jump on and ready to run, but also, it's not as if it's going super fast. And that's a great analogy because when you make the wrong hire and you turn up, right, the speed of your treadmill and now it's going even faster, the expectation, if you let your content manager go, you now have to slow that treadmill back down in order for somebody to hop back on, or you're going to try to get them onto something that's going so fast and it's going to be a little bit more difficult.

Allison Riggs
0:24:05
So make the right hire. And then when they get there, they don't need to go through an overly strenuous onboarding process. Right. Let them learn about your products and services while they are writing articles, while they are already creating content for you because they're going to be doing research. They're going to be coming up with interview questions.

Allison Riggs
0:24:28
They're going to be interviewing your staff, right? They're going to be reading the materials that you've given them. They're going to be learning. We say on-the-job training and on-the-job learning. That is the expectation that I have for content managers. And that we are able to then help edit and help them with their craft of writing

Allison Riggs
0:24:47
and making sure that it's SEO focused and all of those technical pieces, but get them going, right? Like, if they're passionate about writing, remember, I'm gonna keep bringing it back to the key points. If they're passionate about writing

Allison Riggs
0:25:00
and they love writing and they love storytelling, they shouldn't have an issue coming in and creating content from the beginning. And if you prepare them in the hiring process, like I said, you're gonna be coming onto a treadmill that's already running.

Allison Riggs
0:25:14
If we're preparing them for getting up and getting going, then they should be able to do that. And then if we internally set them up for interviews and topics and brainstorms that we've already done, they should be able to hit the ground running. And that's when CEOs are like,

Allison Riggs
0:25:32
yes, we're not just gonna wait three months to publish content. I would expect by the first three weeks, maybe four weeks, you're already publishing consistently three articles a week, and you've already somewhat built a backlog.

Allison Riggs
0:25:48
Because those first couple of weeks, they're building a little bit of that backlog, by the third or fourth week, they should be able to publish three articles a week.

Alex Winter
0:25:58
That's amazing, and we've seen this work time and time again. When it does hook up correctly, when all these things play out the way you're talking about it, the results speak for themselves. It's pretty darn impressive. But the next question, and I think this is a good segue, right?

Alex Winter
0:26:12
So you're a month in, you're doing at least two or three articles a week, you got a bit of a backlog, things are working great, the culture's shifting, the sales team's pumped to talk to their content manager. What does the future look like? So fast forward six months, a year from now, what can content managers expect as their role grows?

Alex Winter
0:26:28
Or for business leaders out there, what does that journey look like of growth and the future as they move into this role?

Allison Riggs
0:26:36
Definitely, so you all know, endless customer's journey, it's three articles a week. And maybe two articles a week. I'd say anywhere from two to three, just depending on your industry and your size. And I give a little bit of wiggle room there, right?

Allison Riggs
0:26:52
Right. Because at that six month mark, the expectation is to hit that two to three published articles consistently every week, right? We are creating different types of premium content, right? Guides, downloads, eBooks, any type of transitional call to action that we need on our website, bigger pieces of content should be at the six-month mark.

Allison Riggs
0:27:19
We should be talking about updating messaging on our website. If it's StoryBrand or if there's any other messaging, we love Donald Miller and StoryBrand, I think it works really great hand-in-hand with those customers and they ask you answer. But they should be updating copy on the website.

Allison Riggs
0:27:38
They should be a little bit involved with the website strategy, the specific landing pages that we're going after, right? Because once they get all of these contacts, right? You're getting people to come to the site, you're writing the articles,

Allison Riggs
0:27:51
they're coming to the site now, great. How do we convert them on the site? Once they start converting on the site, we should be putting them into sales funnels and nurture funnels, which require email marketing, which require nurturing sequences, right?

Allison Riggs
0:28:08
So they're all expectations on the content manager, right? When we say content strategy, that's all of the content that's coming through our organization. The content manager might not have to produce all of it, but they are a part of making sure that it is a holistic strategy,

Allison Riggs
0:28:24
that it's all coming together, right? And in the age of AI, I see no reason that a content manager at six months in isn't producing the number of articles, working on website copy and conversion strategies, working on email marketing, right?

Allison Riggs
0:28:41
It doesn't have to be every day or every week, but some kind of email marketing, some kind of nurture strategies, social media, right? And in the day and age of shorts, if you don't have a videographer, there is a place where content managers

Allison Riggs
0:28:58
can start to help you with your short form video strategy with this thing right here. It doesn't have to be overly professional, but we know the power of short form video. By six to nine months, a content manager should and can have the ability

Allison Riggs
0:29:16
to help with our short-form video.

Alex Winter
0:29:18
Absolutely. No, I couldn't agree more. And the power of what's in your pocket is pretty amazing. The technology's there. So it's pretty professional at this point. My phone shoots 4K, 100 megabytes per second,

Alex Winter
0:29:28
so it's insane. But so, question for you, right? So content manager, they can do all these things, but for certain businesses and for certain strategies, it might make sense for them to also start to build out a bit of a team and hire a videographer, maybe hire a social media person, depending on budgets, obviously, and every business is

Alex Winter
0:29:42
different. So you have to take that into consideration. But what does that look like, too, when we talk about the content manager's responsibility and the strategy overall, if you start to build out a team underneath you?

Allison Riggs
0:29:51
I really like this as well, because this is what I tell a lot of content managers and a lot of companies, is if you don't already have a marketing manager or a marketing coordinator, the content manager typically starts to evolve into a little bit of a marketing leader. Because we know the content strategy holistically

Allison Riggs
0:30:15
is so incredibly important, if they can really own that, then they'll see the gaps in the areas that we need more team members. And so if they're doing all of the right research, if they're looking at data,

Allison Riggs
0:30:29
if they're looking at analytics, right, we can see what's working, what's not, they can build a team, right, and build areas that we have a need for people to come in and assist and help. And that's what I tell people,

Allison Riggs
0:30:42
don't go into, oh, well, we need to hire a videographer. It's, do you have the gap of video? And if you have the gap of video, what are you trying to do? What are the goals that you are going after? Then determine if it's right

Allison Riggs
0:30:56
to bring another team member in, right? Then if you've got a videographer, which is typically your second hire, because we know the selling seven is so incredibly impactful. We know short form video is so impactful.

Allison Riggs
0:31:08
I mean, YouTube is the second search engine right now. So if you're not leaning into YouTube right now, even if you've got your amateur videos, it is a great place to get started. And knowing people learn, right, visually, and in written form, so tap into those audiences.

Allison Riggs
0:31:25
But once you've got those two hires, the content manager, depending on the amount of content that we're creating with the premium content, and the email marketing, and the social media, if we're not able to hit the mark that we want to, then that's the time to evaluate.

Allison Riggs
0:31:40
Maybe we need a junior content manager to come in, right? Maybe you don't want to advance that content manager to a marketing manager, but maybe they've got a second content writer who is focusing on just producing the articles while your content manager is really stepping

Allison Riggs
0:31:57
into the nurturing campaigns, the social media aspect, helping and working on the website. Right. If you can't, you know, not every company is a web developer, but you do need someone in your organization that is analyzing your website and taking the data from it and making sure that we're hitting the highest conversion points possible. So it really is getting the program started, getting that strategy ingrained into the organization, making sure your sales team

Allison Riggs
0:32:26
is really a part of the content process, then finding the gaps, right? Then filling those gaps with really great team members who, same thing, understand the strategy, are super passionate, and super coachable.

Alex Winter
0:32:41
Excellent points, excellent, excellent points.

Alex Winter
0:32:43
This has been a great conversation, and this is my favorite part of the show. This is very they ask, you answer, but I wanna talk about the one thing. The one thing. Marcus preaches this and I think it's a really cool facet

Alex Winter
0:32:57
of what we teach here. Out of everything we've discussed today, I'm a business owner, I read the book, I'm pumped up, I'm fired up, I wanna hire a content manager. What's the one thing you would tell me to do right now

Alex Winter
0:33:07
or the one thing that I should take away from our conversation today? No pressure.

Allison Riggs
0:33:15
I think the one thing is understand the role and the expectations of the role. If you as a business leader can truly understand what the expectations for the role are and how important it is and how it's a pillar of being successful with the ask you answer, you will then ultimately slow down, find the right person, train the right person, right, give them all the tools and the skills that they need in order to be successful in that role.

Allison Riggs
0:33:51
That's one thing.

Allison Riggs
0:33:52
Just truly understand how important this role can be for your organization and how important it is to find the right person.

Alex Winter
0:33:57
Well said, and even if you're really fired up, sometimes it's important to really slow down and to speed up and make sure you're doing exactly what you just said, finding that right person. Allison, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Allison Riggs
0:34:09
Yeah, anytime, Alex.

Alex Winter
0:34:11
We'll have you back on again soon. And for everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex. We'll see you on the next one. this is Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex. We'll see you on the next one.