Content Strategist job description

Content and SEO — Content Strategist
Owns strategy, briefs and organic performance for a topic area.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Set content strategy across several topic areas, aligning it to a business goal, and coach others to write briefs to your standard.
- Diagnose technical issues that only show up at scale, such as crawl budget waste or rendering problems, and get them onto the engineering roadmap.
- Find why a page is missing from the index and fix it, including pagination, URL parameters and faceted pages.
- Own the style guide, adding rules for image rights, sponsorship and AI-use disclosure, and train writers and editors on it.
- Develop a newsworthy campaign concept from scratch, from a data story to a creative asset, and brief the team executing it.
- Build reporting that ties content performance to business goals, including reader feedback such as comments and survey answers, and use it to redirect the team's effort.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the Content Marketing Specialist level (level 2 of 5) or equivalent
- Holds HubSpot Content Marketing Certification

REQUIRED SKILLS
Search Strategy
- Keyword and Search Intent Research — You can prioritize keyword opportunities across a whole content program by intent, difficulty and business value, and defend the calls you did not chase.
- Competitor and Content Gap Analysis — You can run the analysis across a content program, spot where a whole category under-serves a search intent, and decide whether a gap needs new content or an update.
- Content Strategy and Briefing — You can set content strategy across several topic areas, aligning it to a business goal, and coach others to write briefs to your standard.
- Editorial Calendar Management — You can build and run the calendar for a topic area, balancing writer capacity against publishing goals, and resequence it when priorities shift.

Search Optimization
- On-Page SEO Optimization — You can set the on-page standard your team writes to, and diagnose why a well-written page still is not ranking.
- SEO Metadata and Title Writing — You can set metadata standards and templates for the team, and diagnose a page with strong rankings but weak click-through.
- Internal Linking and Architecture — You can design the internal linking for a topic cluster so authority flows to the pages meant to rank, and audit an existing cluster for gaps.
- Technical SEO Auditing — You can diagnose technical issues that only show up at scale, such as crawl budget waste or rendering problems, and get them onto the engineering roadmap.
- Site Speed and Core Web Vitals — You can diagnose which specific Core Web Vitals metric is failing and why, and specify the fix in terms a developer can implement.
- Structured Data Markup — You can choose schema types for a new page type and fix markup that disagrees with the visible page, not only the warning.
- Crawl and Indexation Management — You can find why a page is missing from the index and fix it, including pagination, URL parameters and faceted pages.

Editorial Craft
- Long-Form Editorial Writing — You can write the pieces the rest of the team finds hardest, and edit others' drafts so the structure, not just the sentences, improves.
- Editorial Style Governance — You can own the style guide, adding rules for image rights, sponsorship and AI-use disclosure, and train writers and editors on it.
- Copyediting and Proofreading — You can edit difficult or sensitive copy where the argument itself is the problem, and give notes that help writers improve their next draft.
- Content Localization — You can localize a content set for a market on your own, using the terms people there search for and rewriting where translation falls short.
- Content Quality and Trust — You can set the pre-publication checks for a topic area: named authors, cited sources, first-hand evidence and disclosure of how the piece was made.
- Content Management and Publishing Operations — You can set up and run the publishing workflow for a topic area, including templates, roles, review steps and scheduled publication.

Digital PR
- Digital PR Campaign Development — You can develop a newsworthy campaign concept from scratch, from a data story to a creative asset, and brief the team executing it.
- Link Prospecting and Outreach — You can run an outreach campaign end to end and land links from sites that matter, and you drop weak prospects early. You judge a site by whether its audience is real, not by a tool's score for it.
- Backlink Profile Analysis — You can audit a backlink profile on your own and turn it into work: links to chase, links to reclaim, risks to watch. You can explain your call on a borderline link rather than pointing at a metric.

Performance Analysis
- Organic Performance Analysis and Reporting — You can build reporting that ties content performance to business goals, including reader feedback such as comments and survey answers, and use it to redirect the team's effort.
- Content Audit and Pruning — You can run a full audit and carry out the pruning yourself, redirects included, keeping low-traffic pages that do a job other than earning visits.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can coordinate a small team's work on a shared goal: who does what by when, what has to wait for what, and a revised plan when things change.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate a whole project including its risks and unknowns, split it into stages, and defend the estimate when it is challenged.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can hold accountability for outcomes delivered mostly by other people, taking the blame when it fails and passing on the credit when it works.
- Quality Focus — You can set how quality is checked on complex work shared by several teams, and you spot the problems that only appear where their pieces meet.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can make the call on a problem outside your expertise and explain its cost, time and risk.
- Domain Expertise — You can advise the team on your area and apply new developments in the field where they pay off.
- Continuous Learning — You can judge which new ideas are worth the team's time and which are not, and you make room for the people around you to learn too.

Communication
- Communication — You can bring disagreeing groups to agreement on the facts and the next steps, and help colleagues frame a difficult or sensitive message.
- Collaboration — You can align teams with competing priorities on a common goal, surfacing the conflict early instead of letting it harden into resentment.
- Writing & Documentation — You can own the documents behind a large piece of work, coordinating contributions so that people who were not involved can carry it on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can win support for a proposal, reset expectations when the plan changes, and turn down a request with a reason the other side accepts.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can lead one piece of work shared by several people, on your own team and beyond, and make calls that they act on.
- Mentoring — You can mentor someone over months, tell them the uncomfortable thing they need to hear, and adapt how you teach to how they learn.
- Strategic Thinking — You can look a year ahead in your area, name what will matter by then, and turn that into work people can pick up now.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- HubSpot Content Marketing Certification (required from Content Marketing Specialist)