As a mid-career writer, I am still doing a quite a bit of learning and honing of my craft – probably always will be. So, I know how crucial it is to be able to turn to other content creators for advice from time-to-time. For the next few months, I thought I would repay the kindness of others who have taught me so much by offering up some complimentary thoughts and insights. I’m basing this Q&A series on actual inquiries that I have received from other writers as I figure if one person has this questions, then there are likely many others out there who would be interested in this information.
Q: What exactly do you do as the Superwoman of Words at Lisa Baker Associates?
A: I absolutely love being thought of as a superhero, even if it’s only words that I have “power” over. My boss actually bestowed this title on me because I have a knack for enhancing pieces of content that are put in front of me, whether it’s by editing or rewriting them, or simply catching spelling, grammar, and other typographical errors.
As LBA’s Superwoman of Words (aka, Chief Content Officer) my responsibilities include:
Content Creation - Website pages and blogs are my main focus, but I am sometimes pulled in on other projects from email marketing to social media posts, to print and radio ads.
Editing – We have other content creators on our team whose work I review and edit.
Strategy Development - Typically, I am involved in setting strategy from the start of a relationship with a new client. I sit in on our client intake meetings, and from the information gathered, I create a content creation brief. This brief sets the tone for all content, marketing, promotional, etc. materials that we will develop in the future so it's a critical document to get right. It tells the client that we hear them, and we get their story.
Monthly Content Creation Planning – This process involves reviewing past months’ projects, checking on the current month’s projects, and scheduling future content projects and assigning them to the appropriate team members.
Special Projects - I often work with the president of LBA on special projects, whether for our clients, e.g., survey creation and analysis, or our company, e.g., growth and expansion plans.
There are certainly other things I do - in a small company, it's about wearing many hats, but these are the five main roles.
If being a Chief Content Officer is something you’re striving for, but you’re just not sure what path to take to get there, know that my own path to this position was not a straight one. Like many other professionals, I have had a windy career path that ranged from consumer marketing to fitness to entrepreneurship. In every single one of these situations, though, there were always lots of projects that involved writing and editing, and I was able to parlay that experience into the job I have today!
If you have questions about content creation that you’d like me to answer in a future post, please send me message.
Author's Note: This article was written in my role as Chief Content Officer for Lisa Baker Associates and originally published on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/karens-monthly-writing-tips-summer-qa-series-karen-isgur-damon/.
