Content conjunction, but who owns the function?

mlns='> Hookin’ up teams and makin’ them run right [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 12.9.22 Connect With CMI  [80+ Content Marketing Trends for Success in 2023]( Will your content marketing plans weather the changes ahead? More than 80 thought leaders, award winners, and subject matter experts offer their advice and insights on the content trends that will have the most impact on your plans and success in 2023. Find out if you're adequately prepared (and where to focus if you're not). [Read more]( By Stephanie Stahl More of the week's best stuff: - [CMI News: A Tsunami of Emails? Blame a Leaky Reporting Structure]( Robert Rose - [How This Outside-the-Box Approach to Content Produced Award-Winning Results]( Ann Gynn - [Content Creation Process: Everything You Need To Wow Your Audience]( Jodi Harris - [5 Building Blocks For Connecting Content to B2B Revenue Growth]( Greg Levinsky - [Before Deciding Where Your Content Team Reports, Pay Attention to This [Rose-Colored Glasses]]( Robert Rose  Content conjunction, but who owns the function? When a brand creates a new content marketing or content strategy team, they often ask, “What function or department should the content team report to?” My answer? “Yes!” Now, I’m not trying to be a smart aleck. (Well, I am a little bit, do you even know me?) But seriously, my yes comes from years of helping implement content teams in dozens of businesses. My affirmative response indicates the most important thing isn’t to whom content reports; it’s that content teams report to the business. When it reports into a function – such as brand, marketing, sales enablement, demand gen, PR/comms, or even (yes, really in one case) finance – the business acknowledges content marketing is a real thing with real responsibilities, power, and the capacity to affect business outcomes. “What outcomes?” you might ask. Well, that depends on where content marketing reports. Now you have the real conundrum. You can’t figure out where content marketing and content strategy should report without knowing the expected business outcomes, and you can’t know the business outcomes until you know where they’re reporting. It’s tricky. Content as a strategic function in business affects almost everything. That pervasiveness means nearly any function in the business could “own” content as a strategy. For example, we recently worked with a company about a year into its enterprise-wide digital transformation strategy. They have a content team, and we were to help them assemble a governance and operational approach for their website content. When we determined the right operational processes, we got into trouble. A content team leader asked, “What if someone proposed a new AI chatbot as part of this digital transformation for the website? Is it a content project with a technology component or a technology project with a content component?” The question isn’t semantics. Instead, the answer determines the process for development, the team owning implementation, and the measurement by which it's deemed successful. It’s not just a technology challenge, either. The company also wanted to create new brand content guidelines for the website. Is that a content team project informed by the brand team or a brand project in consultation with the content team? Given content's pervasiveness, you can argue it is part of any meaningful communications initiative the business takes on. But sales' needs are different from marketing's, and HR's requirements are different from the demand-gen team's. However, to achieve consistency in content and communication, it doesn't make sense to let each function determine its content strategy. To achieve the balance between an enterprise-wide content strategy and the unique needs of every function in the business, the leaders and practitioners must decide to whom content reports. Again, the agreement is important, not the where or what of the agreement. In this week’s [Rose-Colored Glasses]( I share three keys to implementing a balanced, strategic structure for your brand’s use of content – and determining where ownership should sit within your enterprise. While it doesn’t dictate your specific definitions and standards, the model will help you identify how they’ll be maintained and enforced. Ultimately, I think you’ll find that determining the where, how, and what of a content strategy implementation isn’t the most important. The act of deciding is. But I’m curious to hear if you agree. Send me [an email](mailto:cmi_info@informa.com?subject=Rose-Colored%20Glasses) or leave a comment on the [article page]( to let me know. If you want any desired consequence, you had better decide on all the things that would help create it. Until then, remember: It’s your story. Tell it well. Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute Do you have colleagues or friends who would benefit from Robert's weekly updates? If so, please invite them to [subscribe]( here.   Sponsored Content How Pillar-Based Marketing Is Changing SEO Organic SEO should not have to take up to a year before seeing significant ROI. Consider search behavior networks in aggregate, not just broad search terms. Machine learning can process this for you and provide you with the right data set. [Click here to learn how to adopt a pillar strategy with a short-tail keyword as the main pillar, extending into sub-pillars and blog posts]( [»](   More From CMI Accelerate Your Revenue With Content in 2023 Join us next Wednesday, December 14, for ContentRev Summit, where you’ll learn how to prove the value of content on bottom-line success. Sign up for this free online event and gain strategies for creating digital experiences that convert, accelerating revenue with content analytics, building a syndication operation, and more. [Register for free](  [CONTENT CREATION RESOURCES](  Events [Content Marketing World]( [ContentTECH Summit]( [Content Marketing Awards]( Resources [Research]( [White Paper/eBook Library]( [Content VIPs]( [CMI Business Directory]( Education [Content Marketing University]( [Chief Content Officer]( [Webinars]( [Job Listings]( Interested in advertising with CMI? 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